The significant gender imbalance affecting the UK’s engineering and technology (E) workforce has persisted despite renewed efforts to encourage women to pursue such careers. According to a 2017 surveyfootnote{label{first} www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/datasets/employmentbyoccupationemp04} by the Office of National Statistics, only 10.6\% of engineering professionals were women. This means that a large pool of knowledge, creativity and differing perspectives is missing in the sector. This problem is deeply rooted in modern society; thus, it is imperative to see which factors influence both men and women to both study engineering and to enter the profession and to tackle those most responsible for discouraging many women to do so. The loss of more women than men wanting to study STEM subjects throughout their educational years is often referred to as a leaky pipelinefootnote{label{second} Jacob Clark Blickenstaff (2005)}. In order to try to seal this pipeline, the following factors need to be addressed:egin{enumerate}item Attracting and encouraging girls to study STEM subjects which could lead to careers in engineering. item Keeping women that had initially chosen such studies and/or careers to remain in the industry.end{enumerate}A surveyfootnote{label{third} Philippa Goodrich (2016)} of approximately 600 8-9 year old girls conducted during an airshow showed that only 6 responded positively to questions such as “Do you know about engineering? Would you like to be an engineer? Have you thought about engineering?”. This demonstrates that from an early age, many girls are discouraged from pursuing traditionally “male careers”. Abigail Powell , Andrew Dainty & Barbara Bagilhole (2012) suggest that girls require active encouragement and are influenced more by other people, while boys tend to “naturally” end up in the profession. Those most influential in the girl’s decisions at this stage are their primary caretakers: parents and school teachers. The first step would be to eradicate all forms of sexism in the classroom. Blickenstaff (2005) found that teacher

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