A January 2022 evidence report to parliament, Gendered STEM Workforce in the United Kingdom: The Role of Gender Bias in Job Advertising, documented a number of occupations that were male-dominated such as construction and building trades (97.5%), electrical and electronic trades (97.1%), transport associate professionals (94.6%), engineering professionals (89.3%), and production managers and directors (88.1%).

There are, of course, other sectors that are also male-oriented, including printing. Indeed, a March 2019 BPIF gender analysis (using 2018 data) for all occupations within the sector found that 69% of workers were male. This is only marginally better than 2013 when the sector was 72% male.

But if we delve down more deeply into the BPIF’s numbers, of the pre-press technicians, 67% were male and 33% female. The same applies to printing machine assistants. But when it came to finishing and binding, 74% were male, and of printers, 76% were male.

The statistics maybe six years old but they illustrate the problem.

With the background set out, what do women in the sector think of the situation? Printweek spoke to two to find out.

Michelle Thirlby Operations director, InkTec Europe

Michelle Thirlby, like many others, has found that the path to a successful career in print can be very varied.

She started off as a buyer in the food industry and it was there that she was first introduced to packaging and print. This was then followed by a role in marketing for Plymouth University, where she was “responsible for co-ordinating all of the marketing materials for the faculty which also involved print in various forms”.

Then Thirlby went on to join ESP Colour in Swindon in 2010 which, she says, evolved into an operational role over a 10 year span. She is now at InkTec Europe.

Experiences during her career showed her that “realistically, the shop floor of a print company is no different to any manufacturing site – if you are among it and have a sense of humour, it can be fun; but it can also be intimidating.”

She’s thankful, however, that over the years she’s seen little more than some “fairly unharmful banter”, but is “aware of some environments where lines have been crossed”. In her view, it all comes down to the company culture, training, and management.

The male/female split

Of the split that the BPIF found, Thirlby believes that that ratio was probably linked to hands-on printing roles, print finishing and logistics. She feels that “in reality there is a higher ratio of women who operate more behind the scenes in the print industry who are maybe not accounted for” by the statistics.

Notably, she says that her firm has a fairly even split of male to female employees.

Taking the point further, Thirlby says that “anyone with the right skills, attitude and determination could fit into any role within our organisation if they wanted to”. She and her colleagues “believe in promoting equality, and we try our best to recruit, reward and promote throughout the business based on many attributes – sex definitely isn’t one of them. Treating everyone equally is our priority”.

But what about the top jobs in the sector? Are there enough women in the board room?

In answer to this Thirlby says that there are probably not enough female print business owners and that this is a part of the sector that is dominated by men.

She thinks firms “should embrace some female influence and emotional intelligence in their business operations. This could result in a winning situation.” Further, Thirlby believes that “it could potentially change the top job sector balance in the future and for some, improve the business organisation as well”.

But as for attracting women to the shop floor, that, in Thirlby’s view, might be more difficult because “a lack of flexibility, unsociable shifts and work conditions deter females from entering operator roles”. However, from a management perspective, she can see why firms might find it hard to even up the gender balance: “Anyone running a print company will probably tell you: [it’s] not easy to implement in an environment that depends on high productivity and lean operation to function successfully”.

Dealing with the challenges

As to how to get more women into print generally, Thirlby sees little happening unless management leads from the front. As she says, “until the top layer becomes more infiltrated by females it is unlikely to filter down to the shop floor”.

That said, she doesn’t think women are put off. Rather, she thinks there’s a lack of opportunities or poor awareness of the variety of roles in the printing industry. As she says: “It is not as linear as some may think and probably not a sector that is seen to promote or offer a great work life balance.”

The natural question, then, is what can be done to encourage more women into print; should the process begin at school to get more women onto technical courses and apprenticeships?

Thirlby acknowledges that more apprenticeships focusing on opportunities in the printing sector could help. But for her there is only one guaranteed way to get more women involved in the sector. As she says, “change needs to start at the top with company owners looking at how they can embrace and encourage a higher female ratio, probably starting at the board level”.

That said, Thirlby pins hope on the new government making positive noises about establishing a ‘Skills England’ body to tackle the “country’s fragmented and broken training system”. She thinks that “it will be interesting to see how this brings together the printing sector to both understand the skills gap, but also the gender divide too”.

In conclusion Thirlby stresses that she doesn’t think the print sector is alone as a highly male dominated sector: “I suspect there are many other industries with similar challenges. However, there is a chance that if the print sector attracts more females, it could also contribute towards attracting a younger work force as well.”

Liz Shackleton Managing director, Jamm Print & Production

Liz Shackleton is an experienced businesswoman who’s seen much in her years in the world of print including, it appears, her fair share of sexist behaviours.

She explains that back in the late 1980s she was appointed manager at Farleigh Press in Watford: “It was a closed shop, and the full-time branch secretary of the NGA came in to see me soon after I started. He assured me that print ‘wasn’t a job for a woman’ – not a particularly promising start.” Fortunately, over the intervening years she’s witnessed both the attitude of the unions, and the situation generally, change greatly since that period of her life.

Men and women combined

In terms of the ratio of men to women, in her world at least, Shackleton puts it around the other way in that it’s more like women to men. “We have a 60:40 split women to men here at Jamm,” she says. “We do employ some casual staff who are mostly women. And one of the ways we have achieved that balance is by offering employment and training opportunities to casual staff.”

It’s notable that Jamm’s warehouse manager, one of the directors, IT staff, and the head of a new service that the company has recently begun to offer, “all started as casuals on zero-hours contracts. We spotted their potential, offered training and a supportive atmosphere, and we have absolutely reaped the benefit of that throughout Jamm’s existence as we watched them flourish and develop.”

But looking at the question of whether there are enough women in print, to Shackleton the impact of more women joining the sector – at all levels – has been very marked.

In particular, she thinks that “the increase in the number of women working in the print industry has transformed it. When I started in print, business was done in the pub; reps from paper merchants, ink merchants and so on were all male and would offer to take their, usually male, customers to the pub to discuss new deals. Women didn’t, as a rule, participate”.

While she understands what happened in the past – and why – and also doesn’t like to generalise, she says that “that approach really doesn’t tend to appeal to most women, so new ways of making contacts and doing business have flourished in the past 20 plus years as women have become more and more prominent in the industry”.

Getting more women into the sector

Granted the gender balance is changing, but how can the sector get more women into print? Is there a lack of awareness of print as a career for women? Are they put off by a perception that some women may struggle with physical roles?

It’s possible, but for Shackleton, the solution seems to be working its way out naturally over time. She explains what she means: “Back in the day, if dad was a printer, sons often got apprenticeships too. That has changed so much, not least because employment in the industry is no longer a secure job that would see you through to retirement.” She notes too that “a lot of jobs used to be far more physical than they are now...technology has changed the demand for physical strength so much”.

But even in the late 80s things began to change as Shackleton recalls.

“We took on an apprentice minder, a young woman who really wanted to be a printer. That was in 1987. Initially you’d have thought that heralded the end of life as we know it. But within a few months she was accepted and encouraged. And I overhead our father of the chapel boasting to his branch secretary that at Farleigh Press ‘we didn’t discriminate’.”

To get a more even balance among the sexes requires leadership from the right people. Here Shackleton recalls a situation in the 1980s when the former trade union SOGAT appointed a woman, Ann Field, to be their Women’s Officer.

Shackleton describes her as “inspirational”. And she uses this moniker not just for her work in campaigning for equal pay for work of equal value, but “in pointing out the ridiculous nature of some of the sexist practices and traditions that plagued the print industry at that time. I heard Ann Field and other pioneers of equality in print speak on a number of occasions – truly inspirational”.

So, it seems – in Shackleton’s view – that more women like Field in the right positions could bring radical change on top of that being brought by the deployment of new technologies that level the field, and the general change in societal attitudes that come with time.