 The final item of business is members' business debate on motion 11823 in the name of Gillian Martin on welcoming women in engineering day. The debate will be concluded without any questions being put and I would ask those who wish to speak in the debate to press the request to speak buttons. I call Gillian Martin to open the debate up to seven minutes please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Next week, on the 23rd of June, it's Women in Engineering day, and I'm looking forward to the debate celebrating those women who are working in tech and engineering. I'm excited to hear other members telling the chamber about the young women all over Scotland who are the engineers, technicians and designers of the future. I was hoping to spend the majority of my speech today concentrating on the positive efforts to change the engineering and tech landscape rather than dwell on the fact that currently only 9 per cent of the engineering workforce and 18 per cent of the tech workforce is female, but it's important to recognise the problem of underrepresentation and to gently but assertively suggest what needs to be done and highlight systematic failings as we do so. That this debate was oversubscribed by speakers shows how important this issue is, but I want to start with a note of caution. I am a big believer in the power of women-only space to facilitate confidence and change, but I'm also a believer that a concerted effort to have 50-50 representation in forums in sectors that struggle to get women involved is important in affected changes in attitude and perception. If you can't see it, you'll think you can't be it. Putting a photograph of a woman in a hard hat and a leaflet is certainly not enough. In the spirit of gentle but assertive suggestion, I would like to mention my disappointment that in my own neck of the woods there was an event held at one of Scotland's most forward-looking and innovative universities, Robert Gordon's University, last week, on the future of oil and gas. 44 speakers were booked, only two of whom were women. What kind of example is this setting to young women and girls who might want to get into that sector, and how are we supposed to encourage women into STEM and oil and gas specifically if this is the gender-segregated image and environment that the industry is perpetuating? I know that there are great women working on oil and gas. It's not enough to say that we need change. It's not enough to run programmes to encourage women into engineering and have them as an add-on. You need to include and promote women in your sector wherever possible in order to effect real change. You need to look at every public engagement, every workplace that you operate in, and ask what is the perception of the industry that we're representing. On a positive note, there are organisations that specifically exist and work hard with the sector and education to facilitate change, organisations such as Equate, representatives of which are in the gallery today, with tech mentors from Amazon. I believe that we are on an upward trajectory thanks to the concerted efforts of organisations such as Equate and, in UK, the STEMets, and Skills Development Scotland, but it's a steep climb ahead if we are to reach the goal of 140,000 female engineers by 2022, and we definitely won't get to the summit without the sector having a quality of opportunity at its heart. Getting more women and girls into engineering is not solely an equality issue, however. It's also a case of economic survival for Scotland's engineering and tech sector and a key consideration as we seek to grow Scotland's economy. We do not know what the jobs of the future will be, but we can confidently predict that engineering, design and tech will always be at the forefront of whatever innovation drives the change in the working landscape, and women must be part of that. Last year, the Economy, Jobs and Fair Work Committee that I am on did an inquiry into the gender pay gap. As part of that inquiry, we looked at sectors in which occupational segregation was still an issue. Tech and engineering still attract more men than it does women, and it cannot carry on that way, as it just won't have enough people to power its future. There are key points where that sector loses talent. This is the infamous leaky pipeline. The first leakage occurs in late primary school as a notion of boys and girls' jobs, and gender stereotypes take hold. Then, when higher subject choices have been made, we lose more girls. If young women manage to avoid that leaking point, they may fall foul of another leak in the pipeline, when choices have been made for post-school education. At higher education's study point, only 16 per cent of students of tech and engineering are women, but they have managed to at least get past some of the leaks. Say that a young woman has taken the STEM subjects at school, chosen an engineering pathway post-school, and enters the workplace after graduation. Many female engineers and tech specialists only stay a few years in the sector. Looking at engineering modern apprenticeships, the numbers for 2015-16 were around 6 per cent for female apprentices. For civil engineering, it was under 1 per cent. However, I am hopeful that we will see an increased year on year as more concerted effort is made to attract girls into STEM and to encourage women with turners and programmes to re-engage with the sector. A bigger focus on companies to invest in more women through targeted recruitment and training and looking at their policies and procedures with a gender lens. SSE gave compelling evidence to the inquiry that, by overhauling strategies for apprenticeships and recruitment, they were able to increase the number of female applicants, but they had to. They needed technicians to replace the older workforce due to retirement and plug that skills gap. At the end of last year, I was excited to be a dragon on Dragon's Den, no jokes, please, Grimday. I judged the panel for one of the north-east programmes to get girls enthusiastic about technology, design and engineering, and that was Shell's Girls and Energy programme. Girls from all over Aberdeenshire formed teams that were mentored by Shell's graduate apprentices to come up with an idea for the community's energy needs. It turns out that they all worked on green energy ideas. What would you know? That just happens to be one of Scotland's growth sectors. I must also mention that Tarrif and Mintlaw Academy, in my constituency, did very well, been placed first and third, but before anyone said anything, there were other dragons. I wasn't stuck in the odds. There are other programmes like this all over Scotland. Equate Scotland's summer placement scheme career-wise works to place female undergraduates in paid employment with companies. I must also pay tribute to some of the employers who are actively working with Skills Development Scotland to recruit female modern apprentices. Earlier this year, I was at Sparrows and Bridges of Dawn to meet former pupils from my old school, Ellen Academy. I met Leanne Brown, who is a hydraulic technician. Leanne could have gone to uni, but she chose the apprenticeship as Sparrows offered her the skills and partnership to progress her study to a degree stage while still earning. She used the potential to work all over the world with Sparrows. I also met Caroline Gill, who is a draftsperson with Sparrows, and I got a note today to say that she has passed her degree and is off to work in Singapore. In March this year, I met Kerry Taylor, formerly of Midlaw Academy, who, after two years of apprenticeship and I am not exaggerating, has the skills to maintain and operate any part of Peterhead power station. They are young women like this all over Scotland. I want to end by thanking Equate Scotland for that excellent briefing that they gave members and the work that they do to help us to reach the target of getting significantly more women into engineering. To those companies in tech and engineering, who do not know where to start when it comes to encouraging more women to apply for their apprenticeships or their vacant posts, I say that Equate Scotland should be your first call. Their interconnect programme could just be what is needed to help to get the women who are going to power your organisation into the future. I have a number of members who would like to take part in this debate. If we are going to do that, I will have to accept a motion without notice under rule 8.14.3 to extend the debate by up to and no more than 30 minutes. I invite Gillian Martin to move such a motion. The question is that we agree to extend the debate by up to 30 minutes. Are we all agreed? We are. The debate is there for extended. However, can I say that we are still oversubscribed and we are already over time, so I may have to cut the time of the speakers in the second part of the debate. Meanwhile, I call Michelle Ballantyne to be followed by Jenny Gilruth. I feel slightly guilty now because I was just asked in the last couple of hours to speak in this debate when Alison unfortunately had to pull out. When I was asked, I thought about it and I thought I remembered immediately the week that both my son and daughter both graduated from Edinburgh University. My daughter received her degree in primary education with the hall predominantly filled with girls, while my son received his master's in civil engineering amid his predominantly male peers. My first thought is that I hope that one day that my children will sit at their children's graduations and not see such a gender-dominated demarcation by subject. Saturday is International Women in Engineering day, and it brings with it an opportunity to highlight that, even though it is nearly 100 years since the creation of the Women's Engineering Society in 1919, many of their aspirations and concerns still hold us true today as they did then. Progress has been slow. 2017 surveys show that only 11 per cent of the engineering workforce is female, albeit a 2 per cent increase since 2015. However, this is no longer a story about women not being able to enter engineering, because 61 per cent of engineering employers say that the recruitment of engineering and technical staff with the right skills is a barrier to business, and yet 32 per cent of companies across the sector report difficulties in recruiting experienced STEM staff, and 20 per cent find it difficult to recruit entrants to STEM. The opportunities are there, but we must find ways to inspire women to follow STEM careers. This, I believe, is the challenge. Where do young women draw their inspiration from? Scotland has its own engineering hall of fame, so I thought that that might be a good place to start. However, only two women have made it to that list. Anglesby Shaw, a production engineer and businesswoman who was inducted last year, whilst Dorothy Pullinger was inducted in 2012 the first woman. However, Dorothy's legacy did catch my eye, because not only did she train as an engineer under her father during World War I and become Lady Superintendent, managing 7,000 female workers at Barrow. She was the first person, and certainly the first woman car designer to see both the need for a different design of cars for women drivers and also the design and engineering solutions to bring that about commercially. She remains to this day the only person to design and take into production a car specifically designed with women drivers in mind. So I thought, what did she think women needed that men didn't in a car? What made it suitable? Well, here we go, a rear view mirror, smaller, lighter with more storage space, a raised seat and a handbrake that's situated near the driver's seat rather than under the dashboard. Does any of this sound familiar? Because it did to me and I thought, aha, all cars are now designed for women, thanks to a woman. However, what I love about Dorothy Apollinger is that she didn't only design and bring the Galloway car into production, she also won the six Scottish six-day car trial driving it, proving that we don't just talk the talk, we also walk the talk. However, she also created new training courses and apprenticeship, specifically designed for local women. Why was that interesting and important? Well, she shortened them from five years, the usual five years, to three years, because it was considered that girls were better at attending and quicker learners than boys, perhaps a note to current employers. She achieved this and more at a time when men dominated engineering and industry and working women were often regarded as stealing a man's job. She was a woman of remarkable resilience and talent, a leader in recruiting women into engineering during the wartime, an MBE at the age of 26 and a founder of the Woman's Engineering Society in 1919 and accomplished engineering in her own right and a pioneer and inspiration for women engineering. The message now to women is that you can change things and people may not notice, they won't know, but every day of their life is affected by it. I confess to my speech in an audience to the data science event in Edinburgh. It really must come to close. I hadn't anticipated enjoying the day, but it was in fact one of the most informative, inspiring and interesting events that I've been to, so get into engineering women. I remind members that I am the PLO to the education secretary because I'm going to speak about schools at some point in my speech today. I, too, would like to begin by thanking my friend and colleague Gillian Martin MSP for bringing this debate to the chamber ahead of Women in Engineering Day this coming Saturday. In the last 60 years, the type of jobs required by the economy has shifted markedly. Consider the wrthys pit in my constituency. Opened by the Queen in 1958, it was meant to provide coal until 2070. The pit was the main reason the town of Glen wrthys was built, but just four years later the pit shut down. Of course, 60 years ago, the type of work undertaken in the pits of Fife and across the country was not deemed appropriate for people like me. Specialist mining engineers were required to design and develop coal mines, but women were kept away from the process. In fact, in 1958, the Queen defied the age-old minor superstition of not allowing a woman to visit the pit. Coal mining and engineering itself was heavily gendered. Perhaps that historic imbalance is one of the reasons why engineering remains to present such a gender divide. Today, just 4 per cent of Fife colleges engineering students are women, and there remains a stereotypical preconception of what being an engineer means in 2018. As Leslie McCruery, an engineer with Scottish power, says, engineering really isn't about hard hats and sitting down with rulers anymore. For Leslie, the problem starts at secondary school with gendered subject choice, something that I witnessed as a class teacher myself not so long ago. Schools have a huge role to play in dispelling stereotypes and in promoting STEM subjects. In March this year, the Government announced the STEM bursary of up to £20,000 for career changers to complete teacher training in STEM-based subjects, and in Fife the college has started an engineering for girls programme, which has attracted over 5,000 female school pupils this academic year alone. All of that is promising, but only 2 per cent of automotive students at the college are women. As a former school teacher, I am only too aware of the potential disconnect between school-based qualifications and those offered at our FE and HE institutions. That was also highlighted recently by the work of the Scottish Government's learner journey review, which was published last month. Today, Diasio is one of the largest employers in my constituency with their Cameron bridge distillery and bottling plant situated in Leven. Since 2006, Diasio has recruited 158 modern apprentices into the company. Across the country, the company has 78 apprentices working towards qualifications in a range of areas, from mechanical engineering to electrical engineering and coppersmith engineering, as well as in the science and technology fields. 31 per cent of Diasio's modern apprentices are female, and the company hired their first female coppersmith engineer Rebecca Weir last year. Some years ago, fellow pfeifer Gillian McBride was an engineering apprentice with Diasio. During her time at school, Gillian had a keen interest in maths, physics and technical subjects, but she was not sure what she wanted to do after school. At the age of 24, Gillian was attracted to a future in engineering, beginning her journey with Diasio as a modern apprentice. In her third year, Gillian was streamed into the electrical engineering field, going on to work weekend shifts on the production line as an electrician. From there, Gillian's career has continued to progress, gaining experience of product management through a team leader role before entering her current position within the company as deployment manager. Over the past six years, Gillian has also been studying as part of a university co-sponsored by Diasio, recently graduating with a degree in engineering management. Both Gillian's on-going success and Diasio's positive apprenticeship programme are certainly encouraging for the future of women's role in engineering here in Scotland, but there is still work to be done. If we accept that subject choice in school is where career choice is decided, we cannot ignore the recommendations of Equate Scotland's rise into the challenge report. For our schools, Equate Scotland calls for more regular talks and practical sessions from the industry for pupils. It calls for more science ambassadors and gender advocates in every school and for gender inequality classes. Engineering has certainly changed since the days of the Rosses pit, but age-old stereotypes of engineering persist. Gillian Martin's motion calls for action from within the industry, and I agree. From schools, colleges and from the engineering sector itself, we need action from all fields to change the gender imbalance. I cannot stress highly enough if people go over time, it is going to mean that others cannot speak, so I called Jackie Baillie to be followed by Ash Denham. I consider myself Julie Wann, Presiding Officer. I start by thanking Gillian Martin as others have done for bringing this important discussion to the chamber. It is right that we are taking the time to welcome the women in engineering day on the 23rd, as there is indeed a fantastic day to draw attention to women in a heavily male-dominated field. However, it is not enough for us in this chamber to spend just one day a year discussing it, because if we wish to see genuine gender equality in this industry, we must collectively focus far more on how we can help to achieve that. Gillian Martin's motion correctly points out that the Government's ambition is to have 140,000 female engineers in Scotland by 2022—a goal that I fully support. However, can the minister, perhaps in his summing up, tell us where we have got to with this? According to research carried out by Equate Scotland, only 11 per cent of Scottish engineers are women. Close the gap and tell us that 10 per cent of managers in STEM businesses are women. It would be useful for the minister to tell us what those real numbers are rather than simply percentages. However, when you consider that women make up 49 per cent of Scotland's full-time workforce, it would be useful to understand how we will improve those figures in just four short years and what action the Scottish Government is taking. I recognise that encouraging women into the engineering workforce starts long before we advertise the job. Far more needs to be done to educate girls from a young age that engineering is actually an option for them. They have the same opportunities as their male classmates to go on to STEM careers and that they can advance within those careers to the same extent as their male counterparts. I am delighted to see talent Yakub in the gallery because we have made a lot of this debate about the very helpful research that Equate has undertaken. It has been helpful in understanding the challenge because they have found that, regardless of academic capabilities, girls' interests in STEM subjects decreases dramatically as they go through school. Female students in secondary schools are often stereotyped into certain subjects, guided away from others. For those female students who dare to break the mould and study STEM subjects, they often find themselves quite isolated. They are the only girl in a class full of boys being taught by a male teacher learning about the work predominantly of male engineers, scientists and mathematicians. It is harder to be what you cannot see and striving to be in an industry with minimal female role models can be demoralising. It is therefore hardly surprising that only 16 per cent of female students in higher education are studying engineering and technology degrees. That is when we understand that the overall number of higher education students that were female was 57 per cent. It is even more disappointing that of that 16 per cent of higher education female STEM graduates, only 27 per cent of those women actually stay in the industry. That failure to encourage women and girls into engineering and other STEM subjects has meant that we have been creating unintentional barriers for generations of Scottish women, segregating Scotland's workers and denying Scottish industry the level of innovation and creativity that would undoubtedly be the result of a diverse and broad workforce. How can we, as a Parliament and a country, brag of Scotland's first-class industries, convince others that we deserve our place on the world stage when a huge proportion of our population is being excluded from one of our most prominent industries and pigeonholed into careers that stereotypically are attached to their agenda? The task is a big one, I accept that. It is absolutely worth doing when you consider the skill shortages in engineering and I would encourage the minister—I just promoted him—to achieve that target of 140,000 female engineers, not just reaching it but, indeed, surpassing it. I call Ash Denham, with a seamless transition into early coffee. I am delighted to be here today, celebrating Women in Engineering Day, and thanks to Gillian Martin, my colleague for securing debating time to discuss this. That does have strong resonance for menace issues. I am passionate about increasing the number of girls and young women both studying STEM but also, importantly, staying on at work in that sector. Currently, the numbers for girls and young women both studying and working in STEM does, unfortunately, make for some quite disheartening reading. It is clear—I was also on the economy committee when we did the inquiry into the gender pay gap and it became clear through that that possibly girls and their parents are influenced quite a lot by the idea of gendered occupational segregation, which generally sees young women being pushed into more traditional female-friendly subjects and jobs. Unfortunately, that is something that we need to do a bit more about. Girls feel that they do not belong in STEM subjects, but I am here to tell any young girls or young women that might be watching this this evening that you do belong. If you want to study chemical engineering or if you want to be a software engineer, that is exactly what you should go and do. Do not let anybody tell you that you should not do it or stop you from doing that. We need to reflect on the fact that our culture does, to quite a large extent, minimise the contribution of women. If I was to ask the members of this chamber this evening to name some influential engineers or scientists how many of those would be women, would they choose Patricia Bath, who developed the technology for laser cataract surgery or Yvonne Brill, who developed satellite propulsion technology or Mary Somerville, the Scottish mathematician and astronomer or Marion Ross, the physicist, who became the first director of Edinburgh University's Fluid Dynamics unit? It needs to change. We need to celebrate female success in STEM, and I believe that that will feed into more women making choices to study and work in that sector. I want to briefly take the opportunity here to mention Myers-Briggs, which is a personality indicator. I am quite a fan of this. It was developed by two women, Catherine Cook-Briggs and Isabel Briggs-Mire. It was developed as a way for women to work out which careers might suit them. It is a free test, you can take it online. I found the results to be really accurate and helpful for finding out what different personality types might enjoy in their work. If you have not done the test and you are not sure about what career might suit you, that might be something that you might want to look into. Equate released the report Rising to the Challenge recently, and it identified that regular talks and workshops from STEM industries and science ambassadors at primary and secondary school level are particularly important in encouraging girls into STEM areas. It is fantastic to see groups and programmes develop across Scotland that are facilitating this. Women in STEM have developed the STEM-its. Social Enterprise connects young girls with STEM role models, which I think is really good. If you want to know more about that, the hashtag that they use for that is Lassie's in STEM. I was encouraged to see that Edinburgh College, which has a campus in my constituency, has, as part of their new gender action plan, a college ambassadors initiative. That is led by female students who act as role models to young girls at school who are considering careers in design and digital technology. The P7 STEM inspiration programme is teaching gender balance cohort STEM subjects with the aim of normalising girls studying STEM. I initiated a STEM day, which included a coding workshop in partnership with Microsoft Scotland and Cortex worldwide at Holyrood High School, which is in my constituency—I think that it was in March—because I believe in the positive effect that that type of direct encouragement can have on girls. I think that we should do all we can to support and encourage girls and young women and give them as many opportunities in STEM as we can, because they will then do the rest. Congratulations again to my colleague Gillian Martin for bringing this important matter of women and engineering to the attention of Parliament. Recent figures show a huge disparity in female participation in the engineering sector. I think that it was 11 per cent that someone mentioned that earlier. That places the UK, as having the lowest percentage of female engineering professionals in Europe, with countries such as Latvia, Bulgaria and Cyprus managing around 30 per cent—not parity there, but much higher than we seem to be achieving. We probably know the historical and cultural reasons for that. We are engineering was, and perhaps still is, seen as a male-oriented profession. The oily rag mentality still persists and helps push many talented young women away from science and engineering as a result. Research conducted by the American Association of University Women points to a range of environmental and social hurdles such as damaging stereotypes, the influence of gender bias. The climate of science and engineering departments in colleges and universities sounds all too familiar. That is a huge loss to science, research and innovation, and we need to do more to turn that around, but all is not lost. The wonderful Comarnac engineering and science society has been meeting in my constituency for the past six years under the stewardship of Professor Danny Gorman. It was set up to provide a focus in science for school students and to encourage young women in particular to come along and hear about the wonderful achievements of women, some of them from Comarnac who are leading in their field of science and engineering. Grange Academy in Comarnac can be proud of its former people and now they accomplished Dr Victoria Martin, who is an expert in particle physics, a reader in the subject at the University of Edinburgh and who did some impressive work with Professor Peter Higgs. We also heard from Dr Carol Marsh on the future for electronics and some amazing explanations of exoplanet atmospheres from Dr Mary Gorman. As well as the exciting work that they do, all those women have shown our younger students that a career in science and engineering is incredibly rewarding and offers the opportunity to travel the world. After winning an inspiration award, Dr Marsh said, we have to inspire girls to get into engineering, we have to encourage them to stay in engineering and promote engineering as a wonderful career. Currently, we think that we need to increase the number of people with engineering skills, and recent figures have estimated that the annual shortfall with those vital skills is about 40,000. There is much we can and ought to do to firstly encourage women to pursue their scientific interests and to show them that this field is one that they can thrive in. An invaluable way of showing women and girls that they can excel in engineering is to highlight the example of women past and present who have done just that. The brilliant women who have kindly delivered their lectures to the commandant engineering and science society have given us that link so many of our talented young women students need. Real-life examples from women who have made their way in science and engineering really help young women to overcome the self-doubt and the misplaced stigma that many have that engineering just isn't for them. We should bring more of those inspiring examples to the attention of women and girls through that kind of outreach. The motion rightly values outreach as a tool for improving equality, and I am fortunate enough to have some examples of that if it is working effectively in my constituency, too. My own background of software engineering, and while still needing many more men and women to take up that wonderful profession, is showing a steady but encouraging upward trend in the number of female students taking up degree courses in computer science, but the male to female ratio is still worryingly around 80 to 20. Congratulations once again to Gillian Martin on bringing this matter to our attention today, and I look forward to hearing the remaining contributions from other members. Jamie Halcro Johnston followed by Sandra White Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. First, I congratulate Gillian Martin on bringing this debate to the chamber. The attention paid in recent years to opportunities for women in STEM careers has been welcomed for too long. There has been not so much a gap at a chasm between men and women in entering these professions. I know that the efforts of the Women in Engineering Society have been welcomed across the chamber, and this is the fourth national women in engineering day across the UK. It now includes an international dimension as well with events spanning across the globe. Next year, the Women in Engineering Society will celebrate its 100th anniversary, and what better celebration could be imagined here in Scotland than one where we look to a brighter future for women, not only in engineering, but across the STEM professions as well. When the Economy, Jobs and Fair Work Committee considered the gender pay gap, it was clear that occupational segregation remains one of the most significant barriers to more equal pay between men and women in the workplace. Those divisions became self-perpetuating—a lack of representation in some certain professions or certain subjects—is a barrier for those who may be in a position to enter them. In October last year, in a debate led by the committee on the gender pay gap, I spoke of how early and how clear those distinctions can be in the minds of even very young children. That has the effect of narrowing horizons in ways that can endure for life. The outcome has been, as the Scottish Government's STEM strategy recognises, female underrepresentation in STEM subjects that begins in schools, runs through colleges and modern apprenticeships and ends with a sort of professional segregation that remains in place today. It is welcome that the Women in Engineering Society is doing its part, bringing to attention the pioneering women in the sector, creating role models for the next generation. The Scottish Government's strategy spoke of joint action between agencies, as well as action at all levels, from primary education to the broad general education component to secondary education, then into the senior phase. That is a positive step. I feel strongly that opportunities in those areas have to be a core part of careers education, and there are considerable gaps between strategic direction and what is delivered on the ground. We must also consider the impact of policy on the opportunities for reskilling. In many cases, those opportunities have narrowed in recent years, as further education has been cut back. In my recent members' debate on apprenticeship week, I welcome some of the work that has taken place in recent years to increase the headline number of women in modern apprenticeships. However, behind those figures, the divisions between individual apprenticeship frameworks remain extremely concerning. I remain of the view that targeting and developing the young workforce strategy to reduce to 60 per cent the percentage of modern apprenticeship frameworks where the gender balance is 75, 25 or worse by 2021 is not an ambitious one. It is a concession that the majority of frameworks will remain enormously gender-divided. That SDS is clearly bringing forward events to encourage young women into STEM careers is again positive, but it risks being a piecemeal approach without the resource to reach across Scotland. We must create approaches that can bring the whole spectrum of careers and opportunities to every pupil in every school. I look forward to the expansion of foundation apprenticeships and give credit to Jamie Hepburn for the commitment to expand the range of frameworks available across Scotland in future years. The inclusion of STEM frameworks, and particularly those in engineering from the beginning, hopefully demonstrates a willingness to use those apprenticeships to build skills in that area by getting into schools across Scotland, all schools across Scotland and showing pupils that careers that can exist in a more direct way we all stand to benefit. As we celebrate this year's women in engineering day, we have a great opportunity to point to the achievements of women in this industry, to build awareness and to help aspiration. I also commend the number and range of businesses that have been involved in sponsors or in organising events. However, to make engineering more inclusive, policy must be ambitious and must reach all women at all stages of their lives and across all parts of Scotland. Sandra White I congratulate Gillian Martin for securing this excellent debate. I want to concentrate on two parts of the motion. That is positive action measures that can be taken and a small mention in regards to the industry that reaches out for that. I know that I am set in the meeting with ScotRail next week, who are actively recruiting women apprenticeships for engineering. I thank them for that, and that is an example of it. I would like to mention the fantastic project in my constituency, the FEMEN student network. It was established in 2013 by Ellen Simmons, a biomedical engineering student at the University of Glasgow. FEMEN students have been running a programme of activities and workshops that they have taken out to schools promoting science and engineering. As well as their outreach projects, they also have a number of other projects, including Future U. FEMEN believes that one of the main deterrents for female studying or considering to study engineering is the lack of positive role models that have already been mentioned within the industry. FEMEN aims to bridge the gap between the university student and the industry professional to try to give students an idea of where their degree could possibly take them, get away from the cloth and oil rag, as Willie Coffey had mentioned. There are other ways to go forward in engineering, and one of the ways to do that is to host informal networking events, and they call them Future U. In those events, they invite successful female industry professionals and alumni to give a brief presentation answering the questions of how you get to where you are now. Another project that they have is the mentoring system, the FEMEN's body system. It is designed to give younger students who have memberships of the society a way to ask questions about university to older students who are studying similar subjects to them as well. It is not a tutoring system, but students can ask any questions that they want to ask to their older partner students, for example, tips on how to revise for certain subjects, what a certain subject will be like, where can I get help with this, when should I start applying for internships, etc. For the partner student in an older year, the body system gives them a chance to make friends in the younger years and pass on tips and tricks that they have learned through their years passing knowledge on. The help can be anything from occasional messages to meetings and, in return, it can be used for applications. It will let you know how to fill an application, and it allows students to become involved in FEMEN's by helping other women in engineering. Finally, the proudest thing that FEMEN has done is FEMEN's Rwanda. The project was born from a desire for the group to participate in projects overseas in international collaboration between the University of Glasgow, the School of Engineering and the University of Rwanda's College of Science and Technology. The project has gone from strength to strength, and I must thank Ellen, who has gone on to other work now, full professional engineer and her fellow students for the drive and enthusiasm that they have put forward in that. The aim is for the possibility to open up science and engineering as a career to young women, not just here, but internationally as well. I think that it is a unique and progressive learning experience for everyone involved and more important is engaging young women in the opportunities that science can offer. I have been involved with FEMEN over a number of years, including hosting events here in the Parliament and a member's debate on highlighting the work that I and others think that they are mighty proud of. I am proud to have, within my constituency, the Angus training group, which the minister visited a few months ago. Since 2000, it has produced 629 engineers, now applying their trade all over Scotland and beyond our shores. Of those, depressingly, just 26 have been women. That is 26 over 17 years. As recruitment for this year is not quite complete, the group is unable to give me a definitive figure for 2018-19, but it looks like being 43 modern apprentices, of whom only three will be women. The group wants to attract more women, trying to attract more young women, but the pipeline from local schools moves at a dribble. I am grateful to my colleague Joie Martin for securing this debate, allowing me, as she did, to note the problem that we have in my neck of the woods, but I also highlight attempts to address it. Preparing for the debate, I was heartened to learn that Angus Council has been taking steps in primary schools to build teacher skills and science to motivate our young learners, and that, in secondary, careful analysis of gender breakdown in STEM subjects is taking place to support the targeting within schools of interventions to encourage female engagement in science, as well as highlighting positive female role models in the field of science. 1,000 girls, 1,000 futures is a groundbreaking worldwide initiative designed to engage young women interested in STEM and advance their pursuit of STEM careers through mentoring. An S4 pupil from Webster High School in my constituency has been selected by the New York Academy of Sciences to participate in the programme. Participants are provided with a mentor, most of whom are American female academics. Beyond that, following a successful pilot of primary engineer in the Arbrod west cluster, developing the young workforce is funding its own pilot of the project in the Cirmure cluster. Subject to positive evaluation, DYW Dundee and Angus are looking to roll the project out across all the Dundee and Angus schools. Primary engineer seeks to deliver the development of children and young people through engagement with engineering, the promotion of engineering careers for pupils through inspiring programmes and competitions, the development of engineering skills for teachers and practitioners of a sustainable model, and work to address gender imbalance in science and engineering. Steps are being taken, but statistics provided by Dundee and Angus colleges ahead of this debate unequivocably reinforce the need for those actions. Of the 2016 enrolment for engineering across all the disciplines, 84 students were female compared to 1,550 males. That is a 5 per cent representation. The college is tackling the gender issue through an invitation to over 2,500 S3 pupils for taster sessions, covering all curriculum areas at the college. They hope that that will go some way to exposing the pupils to subject options. We will see more girls choosing engineering, and, as I indicated, we need that. Maintaining the positive on that, there should be increasing opportunities for young women and men to get into engineering in Angus in the years to come. The taste cities deal will hopefully lead to an engineering centre of excellence being established in our broth. We have, of course, a significant Scottish Government-backed developments in relation to Mintrose and my colleague Marie Gougeon's constituency in the past few weeks. It is a cause for optimism in Angus, but much work is still to be done before we can honestly say that engineering in all its guises is truly open and welcoming to all. Colleen Gray, followed by Stuart Stevenson. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I thought that Gillian Martin made a noble effort to try and get us to focus on positive role models of women engineers, but we failed that, really, haven't we? Most of us have spent our contributions talking about the difficulties of getting women into engineering and the lack of women in the profession. I no wonder, because the figures are so stark, aren't they? Given the shortness of time, I do not want to rehearse those figures again, but I want to restrict myself to two comments on how we change that and what we can do about it. First, in response, I think, in part, to Ash Denham, who said that those figures are disheartening. I think that they are disheartening, so it is important for us to tell ourselves—and I believe this to be the case—that we can change that. We can change it, and I think that the evidence is there for us that it can be changed. If we look at professions such as law or medicine, which, after all, is a STEM-based profession, those professions have transformed in recent years and have become gender-balanced or, arguably, in fact, in terms of new lawyers and doctors coming through, perhaps predominantly, slightly predominantly, women. Perhaps we should spend more time looking at why that has happened and why it has not happened in engineering, but it tells us that it can change. The second thing is to say—a number of speakers have referred to this one way or another—that our efforts have to be early with young women. They really do, because anyone who has worked in a school and a number of speakers have been in that situation, who has tried to convince young women, even in S123 or S4, that science and engineering is something that could be for them, knows how difficult it is and how strongly those gendered attitudes are already embedded by that time. I think that the critical point there is the one that Jenny Gilruth spoke about, and that is course choice. It is incredibly difficult, I think, at that point of course choice going into S4 to get young women to see that STEM subjects could be subjects for them. I was very struck late last year when I was at a conference, and one of the other speakers was a woman called Zoe Thompson, who is a deputy head teacher at Woodmill High School in Fife, and who herself has a background in electronic engineering. When she spoke about what that school had done in order to try and change that, what was striking was just how much of an effort she believed had to be made. That school has a three-year gender action plan. It has a huge focus on staff continuing professional development because Zoe said that she was shocked at the degree to which many of her colleagues and staff did not believe that this issue was really anything to do with them. That included workshops on addressing unconscious bias, included weekly follow-ups, which she checked and people were reading. I also worked with parents and pupils who exposed them to role models. That is what really struck me. It also included the school rewriting the language and format of their curriculum choice materials to de-gender the language and changing the curriculum choice structure in the school to stop it squeezing young women out of STEM subjects. I do not think that we can afford to be gentle or assertive. We have to be serious and intensive if we are going to make the efforts that will change this situation. The last of the open speaker, Stuart Stevenson, is to be serious. What was it? It was not aggressive. It was intensive, Mr Stevenson. Presiding Officer, I will certainly not try to be too frivolous, but I will try to rise to the challenge that Ian Gray provided and give some role models in software engineering and some related activities. I start with Ada Lovelace, who was Lord Byron's only legitimate child. She was born in 1815 and died in 1852. She was the computer programme for Charles Babbage, who got a huge amount of money from the Government to develop the analytical machine and the calculating machine. She developed the first computer algorithm and identified the importance of branching—in other words, testing and changing the direction of the programme, depending on results—absolutely key to the way that software works today. She was a mathematician, she was a computer person, encouraged very largely by her mother because her father fled one month after she was born and she never saw him again. Born in 1906 was Grace Hopper, a rare animal Grace Hopper, whom I had a immense privilege of meeting on 5 October 1972 at the University of York. She was a programmer on the Mark 1 American Navy computer in 1944. That computer had a partly electromechanical system and one of her programme runs failed and a moth was stuck between the contacts. The Americans call a moth a bug. That bug is sellotaped to her lab notes and could be seen in the museum in New York. That is why computer programmes have bugs because of Grace Hopper. However, Grace Hopper did something incredibly important. She was the first person to develop a computer programme that wrote computer programmes—the first computer compiler that we utterly depend on today. Steve Shirley, born in 1905—oh, by the way, sorry, a rare animal Grace Hopper, retired three times in the US Navy and was re-recluded because she was genuinely indispensable—finally retired at the age of 80, the oldest ever uniform member of the United States Armed Services, and then went to work full-time for the Digital Equipment Corporation, where she was still working at the age of 85. She is actually Stephanie Shirley, and she used professionally the name Steve so that the people that she was dealing with would not know that she was female. She developed a rather deeper voice than she might have naturally been born with when on the telephone. She founded FI, Female International, one of the very successful early computer consultancies. She is still around doing good works in the House of Lords. The original NASA bid for computers for the orbital manned missions, John Glenn did three hops around the earth in 1962. The computer failed for three minutes during his three orbits because it only required 99.95 per cent reliability, and failures were allowed. Thank goodness, Catherine Johnson, who was the orbital mechanical engineer who was responsible for the mission, was there when the computer failed. That computer, because that is what these ladies went on as, was still there. Today, in the NASA Langley Centre, the director is a female, the chief scientist is a female, and the chief technical editor, Perle Rung, young, is a female. There are plenty of places where girls belong in engineering. I now call Jamie Hepburn to wind up the debate for around seven minutes. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I join others in thanking Gillian Martin for bringing the subject to the chamber for debate. I thank other members for their contributions, in particular Stuart Stevenson, who I never find frivolous but always enlightening, including having found someone doing good work in the House of Lords. I did not think that I would ever hear that from one of my colleagues. I say that this debate also gives us the chance to mark women who have made their mark in engineering. Many members have done that over the course of this evening's debate. I will not rehearse all the names, but I will say to Ash Denham that I noticed a few of our colleagues here. I am a little nervous about the prospect of taking the Myers-Briggs test to determine whether or not they should be in their current career, so perhaps we will all be doing that in secret. I fully support international women in engineering day because it gives us that opportunity, but it also gives us the opportunity to recognise the women's engineering society and the difference that they are making in supporting women in engineering and the work that they are doing to encourage and promote education, studying and application of engineering and in promoting gender equality in the workplace. We, as a Government, are working towards those aims. In particular, we are committed to addressing occupational segregation in the labour market in all its forms, but that is a sector in which it is particularly stark and prevalent. Of course, that is driven by many factors, not least the point that was made by Jackie Baillie, that even where women study STEM-related subjects, it does not lead to participation or improve participation in the labour market. Some 73 per cent of female STEM graduates do not enter or remain in that sector. The first example—well, not the first example, but a stark example of the leaky pipeline that Gillian Martin referred to—is a clear waste of talent and underutilisation of a particular skillset, something that we cannot afford as a country. We know that, at school, there is more to be done. We know that there is an interest at primary school age. Indeed, I see this very clearly in my own daughter, who was extolling the virtues of learning about robotics at school, who, last night, was very proudly demonstrating to me the roller coaster that she had built using Kinex. There are other brands that are available, but I am sure that she was demonstrating the admirable patience and interest that I certainly would not have had at that age. I will be doing everything that I can to encourage her to continue that interest. That is a point that has been made by a number of members. It is our responsibility as individuals to encourage girls at a very early age to become interested in that sector and to sustain and maintain that interest, so that they can continue that interest to the other stage of the leaky pipeline that Gillian Martin referred to. It is very clearly recognised in the engineering skills plan that was published in 2015, where the interest begins to drop off at secondary school. The number of passes by girls in STEM and higher qualifications has improved, but we know that we need to do more to improve on that. We can take action, like Ingrid Amann, optimist, and we have taken action to improve on that. We took forward the improving gender balance project with Skills Development Scotland, Education Scotland Institute of Physics, to challenge stereotyping in the school environment. That project finished at the end of March. Its interim evaluation has been published. It has demonstrated that evaluation has demonstrated greater awareness among teachers and senior managers of unconscious gender bias, how that can manifest itself within their activities in the school environment, and greater awareness of gender issues among learners and their willingness to come forward and challenge any manifestation of stereotyping, such as throw-away remarks that they might have in the past. The evidence that that approach has made a difference was starkly put into demonstration by Ian Gray's contribution, in which he specifically said that Woodmill high school and their changed practice were part of that project, which says to me that that is exactly the type of activity that we need to take forward. The challenge for us will now be to roll out that learning going forward. Jamie Halcro Johnston, one of the other ways that we can make a difference in schools, brought to the debate about foundation apprenticeships. We are growing the range and number of such opportunities. We are committed to doing that. We are growing the number of potential starts this year to 2,600 opportunities. From 1,200 last year, we are committed to moving to 5,000 next year. Clearly, it is very important for us to ensure that girls are picking STEM subjects in the school environment, but where they do not, a foundation apprenticeship can give them another opportunity, because they do not have to have chosen that as a subject matter. If they come to express an interest in working in the sector later on down the line and they have not chosen those subjects, a foundation apprenticeship gives them that opportunity to get into the sector. There is much more that still needs to be done in universities and colleges. We have heard some good examples this evening. Sandra White talked about the University of Glasgow. Jenny Gilruth gave the example of Fife College. The Scottish Funding Council has set out its gender action plan, which sets out the ways in which colleges, universities and other partners have to collaborate to address gender imbalances within those subjects where there is such an imbalance. Modern apprenticeships, we have the Skills of England Scotland's Equality Action Plan, which is designed to address a range of imbalances, not least among some gender imbalances. We have a long way to go in that regard. I do not shy away from that. That is most starkly demonstrated by the fact that if you take away construction-related frameworks, which includes engineering, we have a majority of participants in modern apprenticeships who are female, but overall the participation is 60 per cent male to 40 per cent female, which shows where the clear imbalance comes from. I have to say if ever there was a way of promoting the benefits of an apprenticeship to anyone, it would be to go along with Graeme Dey to the Angus Training Group, which I was very happy to do. It is not only to see the tremendous training that Graeme Dey put in place, but I know that money is not the only motivating factor for any person getting into their career. However, when you speak to those apprentices, their earning potential, after they not long finish their training, is significant and well ahead of median earnings. Again, that can be another way that we can promote this sector to a wider range of people. I am up against time. I would have liked to go on to speak a little about the work that we are doing with women returners projects, with the Quate Scotland and other ranges of activity that we are taking forward through the Workplace Equality Fund, through the Prince of Eternity discrimination and the working group that I am taking forward and through the fair work practice that we are seeking to promote more widely. I recognise that the road that we have to travel is still significant. We have begun to take those steps, but I am determined that we get to the end of it to ensure that we have far better and far more equitable participation in engineering across the range of our population, so more women can get that chance.