It may have once been a man’s world, but the electrician industry is changing.

Honestly, how many times have you ever seen a female electrician? It’s extremely rare to see a woman tinkering with circuitry and electronics and chances are you’d probably be quite shocked if a woman advertised herself as an electrician.

It’s an unfortunate side-effect of the electrical industry, which somehow as it has developed has become an extremely male-dominated profession.  As a result of this ‘man’s world’ that has become a mainstay in the electrician field, this means that the amount of males being trained to become electrical contractors is significantly less than the ever-increasing demand people have of electricians.

Research by the ECA (Electrical Contractors Association) found that – amazingly – less than one per cent of qualified operatives in electrical contracting are female.  Given that around 51 per cent of the UK is made up of females, that’s a pretty small number for such a huge industry!

But what can be done to change this stigma and get more women into the electrical contracting industry? Can it be done at all? The ECA certainly believes so, as last year they launched their Wired for Success campaign.

The ECA believes that by inspiring more women to join the electrical industry, there will be a positive change in the amount of women employed in the field, ultimately modernising the contracting industry and bringing in gender equality to an extremely male-oriented field.

It’s an uphill battle for sure given how ingrained ‘man’ is an electrician, but it’s certainly a move in the right direction to ensure that things change. This is 2012 after all, and if we continue to use the current male workforce its more than likely that in the future we simply won’t be able to cope at all with the demands electricity has on our daily lives.

Spearheading the campaign, former ECA President and Skills Ambassador, Diane Johnson, says: “On the one hand, our industry is facing an impending skills crisis. On the other, there are more than a million unemployed women in the UK at the moment. In my head I see an obvious solution to two problems!”

Johnson continues: “We believe we’ve developed a blueprint for success that can be applied in many industries where a demographic is underrepresented. Wired for Success particularly encourages women – who make up 51 per cent of the UK’s population – into electrical contracting. This is a career which can give women the flexibility to work and be a hands-on parent. We’re hopeful that at the end of the programme, some will go on to set up their own businesses and even provide employment to others.”

The Wired for Success scheme has been running since 2011 and is a two-year programme designed to train 12 women in London to be electricians. The scheme works with three electrical contractors known as Axis, Mulalley and Smith & Byford and hopes to shake up the electrical industry by showing that women can perform just as well as men in the field.

Johnson said: “This programme is a great example of like-minded organisations working together to build better lives for people. We are keen to engage with Government to see how this template can be expanded. We would like to discuss funding, and how it could be focused on initiatives like this rather than on Further Education courses that get people a certificate but do not necessarily provide the hands-on experience required by employers.”

It's certainly a great start for building a future where genders are fairly represented in industry. As it stands, being an electrician isn't the only profession where men are seen more frequently than women. Engineers, in particular, are also suffering a significant shortage of women candidates on university courses and actually in employment, while several other professions don't see as many women as men either.