An open letter to Theresa May MP, calling for the UK Government to close the gender pay gap and value women’s work has been signed by 36 signatories, including scientists, journalists and political activists. Professor Eleanor Stride, who we featured in our Born to Engineer series was among them.
The letter calls on the government to “close the gender pay gap”. Arguing that “it would be good for the economy [..] but more than that, women are undervalued and that has to change”.
Born to Engineer agrees – 90% of the STEM workforce is male and we need to get more women into science, technology, engineering and maths careers to ensure that British Engineer remains strong and competitive internationally.
The letter concludes that “workplaces are segregated, with men concentrated at the top and women at the bottom. Women are still less likely to progress. Discrimination is still a fact of life, with harassment and pregnancy discrimination playing their part in preventing many women from earning to their full potential. And we don’t have pay transparency. In a culture of secrecy, wage inequality is allowed to thrive”.
You can join the conversation on Twitter using the hastag #equalvalue
Read the letter in full via the Telegraph
Watch Our Born to Engineer Video Featuring Biomedical Engineer Eleanor Stride
Dr Eleanor Stride is a biomedical engineer working at Oxford University to develop revolutionary new methods for delivering chemotherapy drugs.
Eleanor works to create and control micro-bubbles which can be injected into the bloodstream of cancer patients, magnetically guided to the site of the cancer and then burst using ultrasound, releasing the chemotherapy drugs at the site of the cancer.
