Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:12 pm on 23 February 2021.
I thank Jayne Bryant for that and agree with her about the outstanding quality of individuals we have here in Wales as role models for young women thinking of careers in STEM subjects. There's been some good progress in recent times; more girls than boys now study biology, physics and chemistry in Wales at GCSE level, and over half of our nearly 20,000 STEM apprenticeships in Wales are now taken up by young women rather than young men. So, there are some breakthroughs that are happening.
Role models are really important in that. The women in STEM board that we have here in Wales—it met last October and was attended by our colleagues Jane Hutt and Kirsty Williams to make clear the Welsh Government's support for the leadership of women in those subjects here in Wales and in those jobs that Jayne Bryant highlighted, and the way in which they can inspire others to follow in their footsteps.
I know that Jayne Bryant will be interested that, at the start of March, Careers Wales is holding an event very close to her part of the world, designed specifically to try to attract young women into the jobs in semiconductor professions and so on that are clustered around the south-east of Wales, and where persuading young women to think of those jobs as their futures is absolutely part of the way in which that event is being organised.