Accountants working at Arnold Clark
Accountants working at Arnold Clark
It’s 2016, and we’ve come a long way.
Last year, the UK reached its highest position since the millennium on the Women in Work Index from consultants PwC. There was also a ‘small narrowing’ (rejoice!) of the gender pay gap in the UK from 2014–2015.
However, it would seem there is still a long way to go when it comes to careers in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths).
In the UK, women make up just 14.4% of the STEM workforce, and the figures don’t seem to be improving.
UCAS recently revealed that the gender gap in university courses is widening, with the biggest gap in computer science, where there are 13,085 more male than female students.
There are plenty of theories why there's still a gender imbalance in STEM education and work.
Here are a few:
EDF Energy’s recent campaign, ‘Pretty Curious’, was aimed at getting teenage girls interested in STEM. The company came under scrutiny for the campaign name, which was perceived as being sexist, by speaking to girls about science in terms of attractiveness. Further fuel was added to the fire when a 13-year-old boy won the competition.
Considering ‘science, research, engineering and technology professions’ are among the top nine labour market demand areas for 2010–2020, it is a huge shame that businesses could be losing out on half of the UK labour market.
STEM careers represent some of the most exciting job prospects, and at Arnold Clark, we’re proud to offer a variety of opportunities.
Right now, 19.3% of the company’s STEM workforce are female – 4.9% above the UK average.
From vehicle technicians to accountants and IT developers, there are plenty of areas where women are excelling in Arnold Clark.
We caught up with a few of these women to find out what attracted them to a career in STEM, and how they have found working in the automotive industry – another male dominated environment.
Jennifer Morris fell into accountancy after deciding that her original university course wasn’t something she wanted to pursue.
‘I had originally started doing a different course at university and after six months I decided it wasn’t for me. I wanted to transfer to Maths but the course was full so I was offered a place on the Accountancy and Finance course instead. It was only then that I realised this was what I wanted to do.’
For Jennifer, Arnold Clark offers ‘the chance to progress with good training opportunities’.
Melissa is a web developer and member of our Digital Product Development team.
Melissa commented: ‘I started being curious about how websites were built during my years as a Psychology undergrad – while procrastinating and putting off studying! These days it’s pretty easy to learn web development, with online courses such as codeacademy.com and railstutorial.org that teach you how to get things going one step at a time.
‘I realised that getting into software development was what I wanted to do, so after graduating, I studied for a couple more years at the Computing Science department at the University of Glasgow.
‘I’ve been working for Arnold Clark for about seven months now. It’s a blast – every day I learn from people who are very experienced, generous in sharing their knowledge and ultra fun to boot.
‘The key is not to be intimidated – free yourself to poke around, experiment, ask for help and Google for information. Remember that everyone starts off knowing nothing and even the most experienced people are learning something from someone all the time. Lastly, I really believe that computers can be friends. Just think of them as pets you can teach tricks to!’
Nicole is an apprentice technician who joined the ‘Get Into Cars’ Prince’s Trust programme.
‘I heard about Arnold Clark apprenticeships through the Prince’s Trust. I've always had a love of cars and this opportunity was one that I couldn't miss! I'm now three years into my apprenticeship and I'll qualify later this year. The support has been unbelievable and I can't thank everyone at Arnold Clark and GTG Training enough for always being behind me to give me that extra push to get me where I am today.’
Carol Fairchild, Group Marketing and Product Development Manager, said:
‘We’re very proud to be leading the way with female employment in STEM careers at Arnold Clark. After being with the company for over 15 years, I have witnessed the growth of our Digital Product Development team and believe that we can and do offer fantastic opportunities for women interested in a STEM career. Saying that, the numbers still aren’t as high as I would like them to be, but we are constantly looking at ways to attract female talent. We have teams that talk to universities to encourage females into the technology environment and I strongly believe that the opportunities are there for women – we just need to grab them.’
One of our web developers, John Gallagher, runs a course called ‘Programming for Women Who Don’t Speak Geek’ once every fortnight out of our Digital Product Development building in Glasgow.
John began running the course in March 2015, after recognising the ‘massive, obvious ways, and subtle, unconscious ways’ that women are deterred from careers in tech.
Since then, the course has been a huge success, gaining plenty of favourable reviews from attendees.
As if we haven’t already done enough to convince you that a STEM career is a brilliant idea for women, here’s our pick of the female STEM role models who are just absolutely killing it.
Image by World Economic Forum, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Indra has a triple-major bachelor’s degree in physics, chemistry and maths. In 2014, she ranked third on Fortune’s list of the most powerful women in global business.
Image by Senator Claire McCaskill, CC 2.0, via Flickr
Mary gets double respect from us, as not only is she a STEM hero with a background in electrical engineering, but she has also carved out her extremely successful career in the automotive industry. Last year, Mary became the first-ever woman to head a Big 8 automaker.
Interview with Ruth Porat
Ruth Porat recently left her position as CFO at Morgan Stanley to join multinational conglomerate, Alphabet Inc. (of which Google is a subsidiary company). Ruth is like a financial ninja, whose talents left her unscathed by the US stock market crash. Ruth is expected to earn at least $70 million in her first two years at Alphabet.
