Maybe they are the 12 best candidates. 

Oh dear.

Should we also worry that they are also all white/ pale brown and in the second half of their careers, and this does not represent the UK population in general? I'd hope that  the NICIEC  are looking at career history and or technical capability to make their selections ?

Oh and not one is wearing a tie !

I'd prefer an honest photo to one that has a had a parachuted-in minority of no great technical metrit purely placed there to make it look good.
Equally I'd not like to think of capable folk who are young, black or female being over looked due to any of those 3 attributes.  I'm not sure we have enough info to comment with any confidence  if the selection process is fair or not, or indeed who applied.

Mike

(who identifies as male, white and in the last 3dB or so of life)

Certainly the UK appears to be lagging way behind in this respect, I can't speak for other Western nations. Countries such as India, Russia, Africa & the Far East seems to be way ahead in terms of gender balance.

Edit - sorry Alex - I meant to reply to the thread, not you specifically.

Wow, this thread has the capability of painting a man a misogynist or leading the argument on, a racist.......if one is not careful.

All of this (below) is from a very limited view point of a white male, 46, electrician, working in and around London, all over England, sometimes Wales and having experience of some of the world beyond here. 

I've certainly come across more electronics and automation (computer BMS/Process control) engineers who are female than I have, electricians who are female.

Id suggest the electrician is who you'd need on a technical help line. With 20+ years experience I'd hope. There were probably a lot less female electricians even 10 years ago, than there are now, - the time is coming when time served  industry experience and knowledge meet with quite a few female electricians and hence applications for the job firstly and an offer to work on the technical help line will follow. 

Are there any NICEIC female area engineers? Have any applied for the Role? I'm sure those are the guys who take turns on the help line? 

We all know there are plenty of female electricians capable of the role now, but maybe are still actively working in the industry, gaining experience or geographically are nowhere near the head office of the NICEIC. 

I only know a few female electricians, and of those, one, who'd be capable of working a technical help line. (Zs for one) - and she probably lives nowhere near the NICEIC office - assuming that you need to still go into the actual office to for fill  this role? 

I can imagine a myriad of men are about who'd be capable of running the technical help line now and live in the right location and have done with being on the tools or in the industry and ready to give back by being on the help line, while still earning an income.

There's probably just more men - now, at the moment - by a very large amount - who are available and capable , rather than the implication of the thread by the very respected Lyledunn, of some kind of bias, misogyny or can be argued for and extended to racism perhaps from the picture presented. 

No offence meant or implied to anyone. It seems to me that, On any given subject, in these modern times, politics, gender, race, religion, whatever the case might be, One must always remember to apologise in case of an offence caused, rather than actual offense caused; and those least affected by the perceived offence are the ones loudest in its defence. 

Kindest of Regards to all on a thread that'll get reactions, open cans of worms and expose a difficult subject. (That perhaps no man should be commenting on or have an opinion on in this modern age.) 

Ho boy, writing that here, on this platform, is akin to speaking in the royal albert hall, or making a speech, standing in front of an audience of a packed out Stadium, in front of an audience you have no idea of their inclinations. And I can never delete this thread with all of its scope for people to misunderstand what I meant to say. So I hope it'll be received in a public debate type way where speakers come to argue for and against. 

I think it's a perfectly reasonable post (but then anyone who's read my posts would assume I'd say that ), particularly if this is to be refreshed every year, as a measure of where we are. Picking up on a point tattyinengland touched on, even if there are changes there is going to be a huge lag in the process...I come from the generation where boys where taught metalwork and woodwork and girls did needlework and cooking, there are a couple of generations to work through before we're likely to see significant change at mid / senior levels, BUT, there are 12 people in this picture, so what's the probability of 0 out of 12 for 50% of the population not being represented there? Well, I looked up coin tosses:

If a fair coin is flipped 12 times, then the probability of getting all tails is approximately 0.000244, 

So that's less than .03% probability (if my maths and the website I stole that from are right). Hmm. If we are talking about people who grew up in the 90s / 00s (bit of a guess from the photo) a probability that low suggests that the coin toss may still not be "fair". 

So keeping asking the question feels the right thing to do.

P.S. I work in a technical consultancy. My line manager is a female CEng. Her line manager is a female CEng. The separate lead technical signatory for the majority of my work is a female CEng. The colleague who I primarily work with on most of my projects is a female CEng. This company does not practice positive discrimination, it just employs the best staff it can find...  

According to Google 3.18% of U.K. electricians are female therefore zero out of twelve is as close to proportionately accurate as it is possible to get.