Technical qualifications and reconciliation (Germany)

In Europe, the proportion of professional engineers is 24%, which in Spain rises to 26%, although three times more men than women are interested in these qualifications in spite of the fact that the first Spanish woman qualified as an engineer in 1929.

Germany has recognised a huge deficit of engineers and top technicians, both women and men, and the need to take on around 30.000 professionals in the short term, which at the moment is being covered by young professionals from foreign countries with high unemployment like Spain.

The lower accession of women engineering and technical professions is linked both to social perceptions and to the educational and financial policies needed to change this, and is closely connected to gender segregation in the professional world and job market, which ultimately hinders reconciliation. It is striking to look at the situation in Holland and Finland, where fewer than 5% of women are interested in doing engineering or other technical degrees.