Kelly and Kieran* were hired at the same time, into the same job role at the same company. Five years later, they are both in the same job but while Kieran has undertaken work-based training, Kelly has not.

The training Kieran received means he has developed the skills he needs to apply for a managerial role. Despite working at the same level as Kieran for five years, Kelly doesn’t have those skills - not formally, at least - and so does not apply for the job.

Why did Kieran get the training while Kelly didn’t? New research from training provider Avado presents a worrying possible answer.

Avado found that employers are 8 per cent more likely to pay for men’s work-based learning than women’s and, when employers do invest in women’s training, they spend 10 per cent less.

The research is from a small sample size - around 510 learners completing an apprenticeship, module, bootcamp course or qualification, both face-to-face and online - and so we can’t assume that it represents all businesses. Indeed, the Learning and Work Institute’s annual adult participation in learning survey found that in 2019, the participation rate was 33 per cent for both men and women. So, does training have a gender balance problem or not?

Amy Crawford, chief operating officer at Avado, says there is an inherent gender bias in play when it comes to workplace training.

“It’s linked to the fact that women are less likely to promote themselves, they are less likely to ask for promotion and, therefore, they’re less likely, probably, to ask for those things which will support that,” she explains.

“It’s one of the many factors that will promote this ongoing gender bias and gap later on down the line, which then affects women in senior roles and women at high pay levels.”

‘Things have changed’

However, Jill Whittaker, managing director of HIT Training, which offers training for the hotel and catering industry, says across the training that HIT offers, the uptake is predominantly female.

She cites her own data, which shows that out of 12,000 learners, between July 2019 and July 2020, 70 per cent were female. And when it came to outcomes from training, women had a 5 per cent higher success rate than men.

“In the sector we operate in, including at the senior levels, the management levels and inclusion at the board level, we don’t see it - and if we did see it, we’d be calling it out,” she says.

Meanwhile, Sue Pittock, chief executive of Remit Training, a provider that works in the automotive industries, says that in male-dominated industries such as theirs, there is an imbalance in accessing training but some of this can be explained by the physical barriers women face in accessing additional training on heavy machinery.

“On automotive, as hard as we try, a lot of the women worry about the physical side of some of the roles,” she says. “We do a lot in HGV and you look at one of those trucks - it puts loads of women off.

“We tend to see a few more on things like body and paint because they’re not expected to pull those engine parts together and have any sort of lifting.”

All this means that it isn’t easy to get a clear answer to the question of how big a problem gender bias is in training overall.

Data from Remit, shared with Tes, shows that, of all apprenticeships offered, there are big swings in female and male participation in certain sectors. For example, in the third quarter of the 2019-20 cycle, 99,720 women started on a health, public services and care apprenticeship, compared with 29,940 men. However, in engineering and manufacturing technologies, there were 81,130 male starts compared with 7,850 female. So work-based training offered in these sectors, it seems, already have a “natural” gender bias.

Fiona Aldridge, the Learning and Work Institute’s director for policy and research, agrees that much of the difference in experience across training providers comes from the variation in workforce composition in different sectors - but we should still be concerned about those sectors where there is an imbalance in access to training.

“Things have changed over time: men used to learn more than women but it was about opportunities in the workplace and, as more women have moved into the workplace and they’ve got more senior roles, it has equalled out a bit,” she says.

“It’s more likely to be a combination of all sorts of things: employers generally tend to invest at the top end of their workforce, so where you have men at the top end of your business rather than women, then you are more likely to see men being invested in. You’re also more likely to see more investment in some sectors that can be male-dominated. Hospitality, and health and social care are quite female-dominated sectors and they are sectors where there is some training, although not necessarily at a higher level. It’s really sectorally focused.”

Flexible thinking

Aldridge adds that there are other factors that can make it more challenging for women to access training that employers need to consider. Working patterns is one: employers tend to invest more in full-time staff but women are more likely to have part-time roles than men.

When the training takes place is also a factor, she says: if it happens outside of normal working hours, a lot of women are automatically excluded, again owing to childcare and caring responsibilities.

And so, in the sectors where women are struggling to engage in training opportunities, what can be done to help them?

Flexibility is key, says Whittaker. At HIT, staff always liaise with the learner about fitting the learning around their lives.

“We talk to them about their accessibility and when it suits them to speak to their tutor, and then we work around them. It’s how it works with most workplace or non-college-based learners. It’s not as if they have to come every Tuesday evening,” she explains.

Whittaker also advises those seeking training to “talk to whoever your provider is and find one which will work for you”.

“If you find the first organisation you talk to doesn’t quite fit, then go and search around for another one because there are plenty of providers and there will be a delivery model which suits everyone,” she says.

Pittock points out that when flexibility is introduced, it’s often in the form of home-based learning that learners can conduct at their own pace. However, this doesn’t always help as women may already work part-time because there is no spare time in their lives for learning and working.

“It’s difficult because you’re referring to people who possibly work fewer hours, if they’re part-time in one shape or another, and then they need more time to do their learning. There’s a bit of a disparity there,” she says. “You can quite quickly see why women would disengage, whereas men probably feel [they’ve] got far more flexibility and opportunity, and probably don’t even think about it.”

Crawford says change must be systematic and calls for government-backed initiatives to encourage women into upskilling and retraining. She raises concerns about the current level 3 Lifetime Skills Guarantee (see box, below), and says it has “really failed” to support women.

“The list of things you can apply for is very digital and technology based, so it’s great if it’s alongside a campaign which then supports women into those roles - but it hasn’t materialised,” she says.

She adds that employers need to grab the issue “by the horns” and proactively encourage women to take part in workplace training.

“The onus is on us as leaders to encourage women to participate and to proactively go to them. Women still want progress. It’s not that they’ve got less appetite for learning, it’s just they don’t ask for it,” she says.

“For example, we run a data science programme and the average status of women in data science is around 15 per cent. We are doing twice as well because we’ve got 30 per cent, which is good going, but it’s still 70 per cent men. We’re really interested to dig into what’s driving this and how we can work with employers to support women going into those career opportunities.”

Employers have a responsibility here, says Aldridge: it shouldn’t come down to women having to speak out and push for training.

“We’ve got to build in opportunity and deliberately think about gender, and how we systematically build in those opportunities, not rely on individual people - and individual levels of energy or feistiness - to get it through. [Some] will and it’s great, but it just doesn’t create enough opportunities for enough people where they are,” she says.

“It shouldn’t be about people having to go over and above, or be really loud or demanding, to be equal in training. We should want to have the best people and support in everyone to develop, and we do need to think about people’s particular circumstances.

“If you get this right across gender, then it’s a massive benefit both for individuals and for businesses to get the best talent, whoever they are.”

Kate Parker is an FE reporter at Tes

*Kelly and Kieran are not real people

This article originally appeared in the 21 May 2021 issue