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