Twenty-five female RAF ‘rising stars’ attended an event at the RAF Club in Piccadilly, London at the beginning of July to promote and discuss women in senior positions both in the corporate sector and in the military.
The RAF is a member of 25x25 which is a UK corporate-led initiative, promoting a target of 25 women CEOs in the FTSE100 by 2025. The organisation was sponsored by the RAF to hold their annual Technical Services conference at the RAF Club.
The audience, including attendees from a range of corporate ‘technical services’ companies and a large ‘rising stars’ contingent from the RAF listened to an inspirational panel of speakers including Chief of Staff Personnel, Air Officer Commanding 2 Group and black women CEOs from the construction and technical industries.
I first heard about 25x25 last year and recognised immediately that it was an organisation that shared the same goals as I did for diversity within the Royal Air Force. Everything that they were doing, everything they were talking about, applied to what we are trying to do, which is to increase diversity across all rank levels in the service, but most importantly in the senior rank levels.
My ambition is for the Royal Air Force to reflect the society we serve. Ultimately, I would like to see it reflecting the demographic where half of our workforce are women. That means we've got to do all sorts of things around recruiting. We've got to see more young women choose engineering and science and technology at schools and in our universities.
We've got to make sure that there are no barriers to them progressing and succeeding in the organisation. Right now, there are still some legacy challenges for women to progress to the highest ranks and I'm determined to make the changes and to level the playing field for all groups from any background to be able to succeed and thrive and be able to live up to their full potential in the organisation.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston
Chief of the Air Staff
The Women in Defence Charter has set out a clear ambition for a minimum of 30% of Defence sector roles at all levels to be filled by women by 2030.