Let’s Get Real About Manufacturing’s Diversity Crisis
If you only have a minute to uncover manufacturing’s diversity crisis Recent observations have heightened our awareness regarding the subtle yet persistent gender biases in the manufacturing sector. In our ongoing efforts to create compelling blog content for the recent HiveMind webinar, we leverage AI tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E 2 to generate both the narratives and visuals focused on manufacturing and digital transformation. This exercise, however, revealed a concerning pattern in the portrayal of manufacturing roles. During our analysis, we generated several images to depict a “manufacturing leader” and a “worker” standing side-by-side in a factory setting. The simplistic request returned images predominantly featuring white male figures in both roles— the leader often depicted as a grey-haired man in a suit. This repetitive imagery raises significant concerns about the stereotypical representation prevalent in online data and, by extension, the manufacturing industry at large. This discovery prompted further exploration into the gender disparities within the sector. Reports from reputable sources like the Cambridge Industrial Innovation [1] Policy, The Century Foundation [2], and McKinsey[3] highlight that only about 26% of roles in the UK manufacturing sector are occupied by women. The salary gap is also stark, with women earning approximately 17% less than their
