Why are we lacking female heating engineers in the UK?
Although we can’t be 100% sure, research has shown us that from 100,000 Gas Safe registered engineers, fewer than 500 are female. And from more than 9,000 OFTEC engineers (register for Oil Fired Technical Association), fewer than 30 are female.
Research shows that less than 10% of all UK heating engineers are female, this is the lowest percentage in Europe, and we want to find out why?
Hampshire Training and Assessments see a huge gender imbalance in the heating and plumbing industry, with the trade predominately dominated by men. We will begin by addressing the elephant in the room and asking the question as to whether we really need women in the heating industry, Stereotypically a heating engineer is seen to be a male driving around in a white van, stopping off for the odd coffee and bacon sandwich, but there is no physical or mental reason why a female is any less capable of becoming a heating engineer, driving a white van and stopping off for the odd coffee and bacon sandwich.

Why would a woman want to become a heating engineer?
We’ll start off with the generic reason that anyone would want to become a heating engineer, despite ongoing talks about replacing gas with more renewable energy, it’s looking likely that gas central heating systems are not going to be replaced by a viable alternative in the next 30 to 50 years and even then, gas engineers will have their foot in the door to training in these new sectors. This means someone entering the industry today will feel secure in the knowledge that they have a career for life.
It seems that many homeowners, and particularly those who are female, want to have the option to hire women to work in their homes, and according to a recent survey of 2,000 people by the Federation of Master Builders:
- Around two-thirds of the public do not have a preference as to whether a heating engineer is male or female.
- 46% claimed that they wished to support women working in non-traditional jobs.
- Of the women surveyed, 35% said they would prefer to hire a female engineer.
Another poll by Water Safe, the UK’s leading plumbing assurance scheme, found similarly that 31% would prefer a female plumber to carry out work on their home and 59% would like more women to take up a manual role. Reasons cited in this poll included:
- 37% feel safer with a woman.
- 12% feel they wouldn’t be ripped off by a female.
- 10% trust advice from a woman more than a man.
- 10% feel a woman is less likely to patronise them.
Surprisingly around 77% of the homeowners surveyed said the most important consideration is if the engineer has the skills to do a good quality job, regardless of gender.
With this information we have to ask the most important question on why do we not have more females in and training in the heating industry.
As young children we usually have a career that we would like to do when we ‘grow up’, with the stereotype of girls being something along the lines of; teachers, hairdressers, nurses, fashion designer, dancer, vet etc.
A report by Education and Employers found that children’s career ambitions only change very slightly between the ages of 7 and 17. The survey asked 13,000 children aged 7-11 to draw a picture of the job they wanted to do when they grew up.
- 36% of children base their career ambitions on someone they know.
- 45% were heavily influenced by TV, film and radio.
We have found that 83% of apprentices in health and social care are female, 91% in childcare and 93% in hairdressing. The average full-time salary in these sectors is £21,200. In sectors with the highest rates of male apprentices, such as construction (where 2% of trainees were female) and engineering (where 3% of apprentices were female) the average salary is £29,600 a year.
Bringing more women into the heating trade could help to significantly lessen the gender pay gap and give more women the chance to put an end to the gender stereotyping in the industry.
More information if you think you could be a heating engineer.
Becoming a heating engineer would require you to do a Managed Learning Programme for new entrants to the gas industry, this job would be suited to people who enjoy solving problems and progressing in their career as the qualifications you can add onto your remit can lead you in several directions, including.
- Commercial Changeover and Reassessment
- LPG Changeover and Reassessment
- Commercial Catering
- Commercial Laundry
- Domestic, LPG & Commercial Single Appliance add-on
- Air Source Heat Pumps
- OFTEC Oil
To enable you to work on gas appliances you must register with Gas Safe and stay up to date with the latest legislations by completing a short reassessment course every 5 years.
Although the heating industry is primarily men, becoming a female heating engineer is a great career for many reasons including the most important ‘job’ for many females of families to care for and households to run, being a heating engineer gives you the option to become self employed or run your own business ultimately giving you the freedom to a flexible work/home life.