LEADING independent property, construction and infrastructure consultancy Pick Everard marked this year’s International Women in Engineering Day (INWED) with the release of a special podcast, interviewing civil engineer Natalie Clemson about her journey from sandwich year placement to national director at the firm.

According to a recent survey, just 29% of the UK’s manufacturing and engineering workforce is made up of women. Now, while this highlights a step in the right direction when compared to figures from previous years, leading multi-disciplinary engineering firm, adi Group, believes more must be done to secure the industry’s workforce for tomorrow.

Innovate UK is releasing new data which reveals the proportion of women setting up businesses has not only remained stagnant at just over a quarter of the total number of new businesses for the last decade, but seen a slight dip since 2010/11 when it was at 28.7%, compared to 27.3% today. Innovate UK’s Women in Innovation Awards looks to help balance the playing field in business by providing more support to female entrepreneurs from across the UK.

Inclusive leadership is climbing the business agenda and is now the most requested management coaching topic, according to the latest feedback figures from Talking Talent, a specialist coaching consultancy. While more than a quarter (27%) of business executives have requested more coaching on being an ‘inclusive leader’ there is still significant strides to be made to tackle diversity, equity, and inclusion issues within business.

Women trying to return to the engineering industry after a career break are more likely to experience recruitment bias than men, according to a survey by STEM Returners.

The Newton Venture Program is unveiling its first diverse cohort of investment trainees set to make the worlds of tech and venture capital more representative and is opening applications for its next program.

Beyond HERizons, a new initiative from London & Partners’ Silicon Valley comes to the UK (SVC2UK) programme designed to specifically tackle the funding gap that exists in the investment landscape, launches its inaugural cohort of female founders today.

Tech Nation launches the Diversity & Inclusion Toolkit; a comprehensive guide to address diversity challenges in tech companies and the UK tech sector, in order to help build a strong, diverse and inclusive tech sector.

There are high barriers to funding for Black founders, especially first-time ones. I know this because I’m a first-time Black founder who has raised (and is still raising) money. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but also a lot of progress. Here’s what I’ve learned along the way.

Black, Asian and mixed background tech entrepreneurs from London and Greater Manchester will join a five-day virtual trade mission starting today (7th to 11th June). The mission will see fifteen companies ‘touch-down’ in North America to meet with corporates and startups to explore new investment and export opportunities and accelerate their expansion plans in the US market.

The Inspiring Fifty UK awards, hosted by accelerateHER, opens nominations to spotlight women excelling in technology careers across the UK and showcase 50 incredible trailblazing leaders.

Ethnicity is a greater challenge than gender when establishing and growing a business according to new research from Santander UK and PRECIOUS, the UK’s longest standing online platform for ambitious women of colour.

For many businesses, the pandemic has been the biggest unwanted spanner in the works that will take some time to come back from. After working from home  for over a year, we can see first-hand the impact that the situation has had, especially for women.

When you are building a plane in the sky - startup speak for tricky innovation in a tough environment - things slip. In the case of fast-growing businesses, important people priorities and processes fall down the agenda. Diversity and inclusion is one of them. It can be deprioritised by default, in a race to stay afloat, pay your teams and spend time on what will get you where you need to go, quickly.

A recent study cited by a leading Fintech publication found that whilst 30% of the fintech workforce is female, only 17% of senior fintech roles are held by women and just over 5% of founders are women. These statistics are pretty shocking as Fintech is such a dynamic world of discovery and innovation.

Working while parenting has always been a balancing act, but the pandemic has led to any existing structures and routines being abandoned.  

Rosa von Krogh is Head of Insights and Innovation at the North Alliance, one of the largest companies in Scandinavia marrying design, media and e-commerce. She is speaking at the global SHE Conference, alongside guests like Hillary Clinton, Norwegian PM, Erna Solberg and Icelandic PM Katrin Jakobsdottir, from 5-19th March 2021.

To mark International Women's Day, University of Bristol-led tech incubator, SETsquared Bristol, are opening applications for Enterprising Women 2.0, a pre-incubation programme for women-led businesses, in partnership with NatWest.

UK businesses are at risk of losing employee trust through choosing to abstain from reporting their gender gap figures, following on from the EHRC’s second deadline extension. Government figures show that nearly half of 10,000 eligible employers chose not to submit their pay gap figures last year - equalling to nearly 5,000 businesses that possibly have something to hide.