Employment across all sectors in the European Union hit the highest level in twenty years: The employment rate for people aged 15-64 reached 71.7%. At the same time, the employment gap between men and women has narrowed. Since 2005, it has declined from almost 15% to 10% today. However, EU manufacturing is lagging behind.
“The latest EU data from Eurostat shows that gender equality in overall employment has improved,” says Dr. Susanne Bieller, General Secretary of the International Federation of Robotics. “However, in manufacturing, the proportion of female engineers and scientists remains rather low. In the key industry for the global automation race, only 22.4% of engineers and scientists employed are women – this is less than half compared to services related jobs with 45.6%.”
The European Commission’s new Competitiveness Compass highlights the integration of robotics as a key technology to boost innovation. Inspiring women to take up Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics subjects (STEM) and explore career options is important: Diverse teams push innovation, and the robotics industry offers great economic opportunities for high-quality jobs.
This is demonstrated by the success stories of IFR’s 10 Women Shaping the Future of Robotics in 2025. This year’s awardees are:
- Albane Dersy, Inbolt, France
- Ashlie Taivalkoski, SCHUNK, USA
- Dr- Caren Dripke, Lorch Schweißtechnik, Germany
- Julia Astrid Riemenschneider, Rethink Robotics, USA
- Kari DeSantis, Fanuc America, USA
- Kate Feng Xu, ABB Robotics, China
- Kateryna Portmann, ANYbotics, Switzerland
- Susanne Nördinger, Universal Robots, Germany
- Yumie Kubota, YASKAWA Electric Corporation/AI Cube, Japan
- Yunzhi Qi, YOUIBOT Robotics, China
Supporting the closing of the gender gap is one of the heartfelt activities of the IFR. In times of demographic change and an increasing lack of skilled workforce, economies around the globe cannot ignore a certain share of it. Moreover, it als proves benefitial for companies to increase diversity in their teams to increase productivity, competitiveness and innovation.
While the gender gap is narrowing down and the female labor force participation rate overall is increasing in many parts of the world, there still is a significant gap in the manufacturing sectors, in particular when it comes to female engineers and scientists. Here, the female participation rate is only half that of the service sector in Euope, for example.
