Industrial Placements: Women’s Experience

Abstract

Coventry Polytechnic has been placing students on industrial training for many years now and has noticed significant gender differences in proportions of students returning to the company of their placement after their final year. There also appear to be differences in what employers expect/will accept from industrial trainees depending on sex, and on whether they had previously employed the opposite sex. This paper uses both statistics and individual case studies to examine differences between male and female students experiences during industrial training placements. It investigates whether these differences are a result of students or employers attitudes. There are also cases where either students or employers appear to have differing attitudes as to suitability for industrial training and suitability for permanent employment. The paper looks at this phenomenon and considers what, if anything, can be done about it.