Professor Sarah McCormack:

I thank the Deputy for the question. I appreciate that he is aware of the statistics, which is good. Women tend to have higher entry going into engineering. Students really want to do the subject and are really committed. In terms of how that goes through the pipeline, we have what is known as a leaky pipeline along that progression. We see a lot of drop-off, in particular from entry-level lecturing positions and trying to maintain that. Where a student has completed a PhD and is moving into a research position is a critical moment when there is no real career path. We do not have a huge number of academic jobs available to those people, something which affects both genders. From a personal perspective, I find as women meet someone and have families they find it very difficult to continue on that research track and maintain their CV in order to become an academic in the future.