Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Forestry have in history been a strongly male dominated area and have continue to be so on till present times. Even though the forestry sector has faced progress and the number of women in forestry have increased over time, women still only make out about one sixth of the total workforce. The forestry sector is facing many challenges with an ageing workforce and a shortage of new personal and for these challenges women should be considered as a valuable resource.
This study has been performed based on a request by forestry program at the high school of Slottegymnasiet with the purpose of finding factors that affects students choices when deciding their high school orientation and to find out what needs to be done in order to increase the number of women applying to the forestry orientation at their school.
The study started with preparatory interviews of working women with in the forestry sector and then moved on to a large-scale survey of eight grade students with in the county of Gävleborg and Härjedalen commune.
The results of the study have showed that both men and women lack substantial knowledge of the forest sector and have received little to no information about the school. 72 % of the survey participants answer that they had not received any information at all about the school at all. The study also concluded that students in counties with a low population are more likely to apply to the school.
The conclusions of the study are that Slottegymnasiets naturbruksprogram needs to develop and improve their marketing to increase the total number of applicants and by that way increase the number of women applying to the forestry orientation. The marketing should be done in cooperation with other stakeholders with in forestry to show the whole width of the forestry sector and what it has to offer in terms of professions and additional educations.