The UK automotive industry has been talking about diversity for years, but the reality is that progress still feels stubbornly slow. Women make up roughly one-fifth of the workforce, and the numbers become even thinner at the senior level, particularly in operational, technical and boardroom roles. For an industry undergoing enormous change, that should be setting off alarm bells.
It is not simply a question of optics or ESG reporting. Automotive is trying to reinvent itself at speed through electrification, software, AI, digital retailing and changing ownership models, while at the same time wrestling with a serious skills shortage. Yet many businesses are still drawing from the same narrow talent pool they relied on twenty years ago.
The contradiction is becoming harder to ignore. The industry wants to position itself as modern, technology-led and customer-centric, but parts of the working culture still feel rooted in another era. Speak privately to women working across retail, aftersales, finance or OEM networks, and similar frustrations tend to surface repeatedly: limited flexibility, patchy progression opportunities, outdated attitudes and too few visible female leaders in senior operational positions.
Most automotive businesses now understand the issue intellectually. The problem is that understanding it and changing it are two very different things.
Often, diversity programmes remain trapped in presentations, conferences and annual reports without translating into operational change. Companies celebrate recruitment campaigns but pay less attention to retention, particularly at the mid-career stage, when many women still drift out of the sector because working patterns, leadership structures, or career pathways no longer fit real life.
That is why initiatives such as Empowering Auto UK are arriving at an important moment. The value is not in slogans or awareness campaigns. It is in creating pressure for practical action and encouraging leaders to look honestly at how their organisations operate day to day.
The businesses making genuine progress are usually doing fairly straightforward things well. They are building flexibility into management culture rather than treating it as a favour. They are actively developing female talent for leadership positions rather than waiting for it to happen organically.
They are widening apprenticeship and technical recruitment and modernising how automotive careers are presented to younger audiences.
Most importantly, leadership teams are treating this as a business issue rather than an HR initiative on the side.
The uncomfortable truth is that the automotive sector cannot continue to complain about talent shortages while large parts of the workforce still see it as difficult to enter, navigate, and build a long-term career in. The companies that address that gap properly will not just improve representation. They will almost certainly build stronger, more resilient businesses in the process.
Stacey Ward, senior director of data products and operations at Solera cap hpi
