A West Midlands business leader believes it is time for manufacturers to ‘flex and accelerate’ in a bid to achieve the 35 by 35 target for women in the industry.
The annual Women in Manufacturing Report has been released, revealing the number of women working in the sector and in specific senior positions.
The report highlights that there has been a marginal drop in the number of women working in manufacturing – down from 28.4 per cent to 28.2 per cent.
However, in other areas it points to a more positive movement in the sector, with a 2.5 per cent increase in the number of women working in more senior managerial and director roles.
The number of women in skill traded positions has gone up from 8.2 per cent to 10.4 per cent, while there has been an increase in disabled women working in manufacturing across the UK, up from 19.2 per cent to 21.2 per cent.
The report was unveiled at the Women in Manufacturing UK Initiative conference, attended by Transicon general manager Jennifer Hughes.
A long-standing advocate for women in the sector, Jennifer was buoyed by the latest figures but insists it is time to accelerate in a bid to reach the Government’s target of women making up 35 per cent of the manufacturing workforce by 2035.
She said: “Overall UK manufacturing has held onto the hard-earned increases over the past few years around the number of women in industry.
“However, it is time for acceleration to reach that target and time for manufacturing to flex, to reach the 35 by 35 target.
“The fact women now make up 28.2 per cent of the manufacturing workforce is great to see and there are real signs of progress across the sector, with women’s share of senior roles rising to 27.3 per cent. That is a real and significant jump.”
The report went into detail about how flexibility is the key to increasing the number of women in the industry.
Jennifer added: “The report makes a strong case that flexible working is one of the most practical ways to do it. More than half of the people surveyed said flexibility was very or extremely important to staying in their job and for some it’s the reason they’ve stayed in manufacturing at all.
“What stands out for me is that the biggest barriers aren’t only operational. Culture and manager attitudes hold people back too and those are things every one of us can change.
Flexibility doesn’t have to mean working from home. It can mean more predictable shifts, earlier notice or asking our people what would make a difference.
“This is a must-read for everyone in manufacturing. The question for all of us now is not whether a role can flex, but how.”
Transicon, based in Telford, designs and builds automation and control systems for manufacturers, including those in the defence sector, across the UK.
The company has introduced a series of changes to attract and keep more women in engineering.
The company has replaced outdated job titles with gender-neutral ones, rewritten job adverts to encourage applicants who meet most rather than all of the criteria and put part of this year’s capital budget into improving women’s facilities on site.
Its outreach into Telford schools, including careers fairs, STEM projects with Marvellous Manufacturing and participation in Manufacturing Open Day led to its first 50/50 gender split among work experience students in 2025.
Transicon also offers flexi-time on the shop floor so staff can fit start and finish times around caring responsibilities, as well as hybrid arrangements for engineers.
Jennifer recently hosted a webinar on making shift work more flexible and argues that automating repetitive tasks frees manufacturers to offer part-time and fixed-day shifts that suit more people.
Her work has seen her named one of Enginuity’s 365 Faces of STEM and among Britain’s Great 100 Manufacturing Leaders.
