Celebrating International Women’s Day 2025  

International Women’s Day is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. It’s also about raising awareness of gender equality. At AWE we are passionate about recognising and celebrating it.  

This year’s theme, ‘Accelerate Action’, focuses on driving rapid progress towards gender equality and empowering women in all spheres of life.

STEM is an industry that has always been underrepresented for women. Looking back into our history, it was estimated that in the 1960’s just 2% of Principal Scientific Officers were female. However, we know there were some amazing women who overcame boundaries to make some incredible achievements.

This includes:

• Ruth Lapage worked at AWRE (as it was known in the 1950s) for many years, as one of the few female Principal Scientific Officers, producing various internal reports, a later patent on uranium ore treatment and an article in the Transactions of the Faraday Society.
• Lorna Arnold joined the UK Atomic Energy Authority (which AWE used to be part of) in a position in health physics and stayed until retirement in 1996. Lorna was awarded an OBE in 1976. Lorna published several papers and books including ‘Britain and the H-bomb’ in 2001 and is renowned for her significant contributions to the understanding of nuclear history.
• Margaret Gowing joined the UK Atomic Energy Authority in 1959 as a historian and archivist. Her 1964 publication ‘Britain and Atomic Energy’ was widely acclaimed for its detailed account of the British side of the story, and her 1974 publication ‘Independence and Deterrence’ received acclaim. She was awarded a CBE in 1981.

Today, the UK STEM workforce is approximately 29% female, and at AWE 27% of our workforce is female. But we want that number to increase.

One of our key commitments is encouraging more girls into engineering from an early age. Our STEM Ambassadors programme reached over 60,000 students between 2023 and 2024, with a strong focus on girls’ schools. Our Early Careers team is focusing on boosting attraction by increasing female-focused events such as Women in STEM and Future Female Engineers with schools and universities.

We’re always looking at ways to better support our female employees too. We’ve introduced returners leave policy to give the option of additional paid time off when returning from maternity or adoption leave. We also provide free period products on our sites to make sure our people can focus on the big stuff like keeping our nation safe. This has been positively received, with feedback including “I know of someone who nearly missed an interview because their period started and there wasn’t anything available – this really makes an impact”.

For this year’s International Women’s Day, we’re holding an interactive exhibition centred around the core theme. Two senior female executives will be hosting a breakfast session to share their experiences on being senior female leaders, and we’ll be hosting a virtual panel with internal and external speakers to debate how we can continue to accelerate action. We’re excited to take part in International Women’s Day and expect lots of fun, thinking and discussions.

We aren’t just focusing on this today, we are always looking at how we can accelerate action at AWE – to ensure that everyone feels part of an inclusive culture where they truly belong. But for now – thank you to women like Ruth, Lorna, Margaret who had to overcome barriers to do amazing things!

If you’re interested in coming to work at AWE, you can view our current vacancies here.