Girls’ day out at manroland

22 young women drop in to manroland in Augsburg, Germany, to learn about apprenticeship careers in printing.

As part of annual action day, Girl’s Day, 22 girls between the ages of 14 and 16 visited a series of workshops in the MAN vocational training centre. They took a tour of the drawing school and learnt about machining, oxy-arc cutting, milling, and the electrical training.

manroland has participated in Girls’ Day for years  and estimates that a total of 800,000 girls have so far have discovered careers in areas such as printing, industrial mechanics, and mechatronic engineering as a result.

According to Kaspar Fischer, senior manager at the MAN Training Centre, there has been a surge in the number of women in the printing industry: “We are increasingly seeking female junior staff. Girls are often very talented technically, but criteria such as social behavior and ambition are also of great importance to us. Girls’ Day is our chance to recruit female apprentices for technical careers.”

Girls who attended the manroland open day said that they were not previously aware of printing as a profession and would not have considered it as a vocation. A common criticism in the printing industry is that it is too male-dominated. However, in recent years events such as Heidelberg Women in Print have slowly changed this perception.