The Fourth Industrial Revolution, or Industry , is disrupting the manufacturing industry and its labour market. However, one aspect remains unchanged: women still are a minority in high-qualified manufacturing positions.

In the European Union, only 21% of scientists and engineers in manufacturing are female. Another striking statistic: more than half of men earning degrees in IT access digital jobs compared to one-quarter of women.

As Industry starts shaping the future of manufacturing, the job profiles require expertise in areas where women still remain underrepresented in most countries, such as IT, computing, physics, mathematics and engineering. So, if the digitalisation of the industry is an open path to improve safety and work quality, can it also contribute to making a social impact by reducing the gender gap and promoting equal gender opportunities?

As the American Association of University Women points out: this is key to "enhance women’s economic security and ensures a diverse and talented STEM workforce and prevents biases in these fields and the products and services they produce".

So is Industry an opportunity for women in STEM or yet another hindrance along the way to real gender equality in the industry? How can we attract female talent to our companies? What is the impression of female leaders within the industry?

Join us for the second edition of Industry Web Cafés to hear the experiences and recommendations from the panellists and let us hear your voice during the Q&A time! This panel discussion will be hosted by representatives of 5 European manufacturing digitalisation initiatives:

- Integradde, whose goal is to implement additive manufacturing for large metal parts,

- DIMOFAC, aiming at reconfiguring assembly lines faster to adapt to mass-customisation production,

- Penelope, developing a novel closed-loop digital pipeline,

- LevelUp, intending to make industrial equipment last longer,

- I4MS, the flagship European initiative to digitalise SMEs in Europe.