Manufacturing needs diversity

I often think back to when I was hired as an intern for a manufacturing magazine, wondering what this world was I had entered. I knew people in manufacturing; they were all men and never really talked about what they did. My grandfather was a lifelong member of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers with a career in automotive manufacturing – I have a photo of him and John DeLorean hanging on a wall in our home, yet he never talked with his granddaughters about considering a career in manufacturing.

So, with no clue what my colleagues meant – they talked about machine tools, cutting tools, toolholders, CAD/CAM software – that summer I ended up taking a deep dive into the world of manufacturing. Hired to write-up the IMTS 1994 product releases the magazine received daily via the U.S. mail (yes, before email was a standard for communicating, or spamming), I was either going to figure it out or crash and burn. Luckily I had good mentors - Stan Modic who would eventually become my father-in-law and Jim Lorincz, who to this day remains a dear friend.

No crashing, no burning, I’m still writing about manufacturing. However, all these years later, women still aren’t well-represented in the industry. Now, don’t get me wrong, the benefits of working in a male-dominated industry mean there is never a line at the ladies’ restroom during trade shows and chances are you know most of the women you run into at shows. Downside, there seemed to be more women hired to be “booth hostesses” at shows than there were women working in the industry.

Despite representing nearly half the U.S. workforce, fewer than one in three manufacturing professionals are women. And, according to the 2021 Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) study, women are 1.8x more likely to leave the industry than men. So, what can be done?

The authors address this in the report noting that focusing on DEI isn’t the only approach and “Manufacturers cannot just focus on recruiting diverse talent, but must continue to focus attentively on building an inclusive culture, fostering growth opportunities and pathways to careers, and living these values at every level of the organization.”

As more organizations are turning to hiring and retaining female workers, what is your company doing?