Egret Women in Industry Survey ... say what?

Prudence Thompson, a recruiter with Egret Consulting, a talent firm with strong specialization in the electrical industry, sent out preliminary responses to a survey via LinkedIn asking why there aren't more women in management positions in the electrical industry. The results were pretty shocking, enough so that I have to wonder whether some of the respondents were taking the question seriously:

Last month we asked why do you think there aren't more women in management positions in this industry?

7% Not enough qualified women coming out of college

9% End customers won't accept them (contractors, plant managers, etc)

2% Not aggressive enough

44% No serious attempt to recruit them

35% Women aren't interested in electrical industry

32% Who cares?

Population 33% Distributor

53% Manufacturer

14% Other

Perhaps the highest-percentage answer -- that there's no serious attempt to recruit them -- is close to the truth, but that anyone would think there's still a shortage of qualified women coming out of college (they surpassed men at least a decade ago) or that there's continuing resistance to them among customers seems far-fetched.

Here's the item from Egret's newsletter that led to the survey