Little girls get TV role model who is handy with a spanner

THE BBC is launching a children’s television show that stars a female engineer in an attempt to address the lack of girls taking up science subjects.

Bitz & Bob is an animated series that follows the antics of an eight-year-old inventor and her little brother. Co-produced by Boat Rocker Rights and BBC Children’s In House Productions, it aims to inspire pre-schoolers to engage with Stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects.

Kay Benbow, the controller of Cbeebies, said: “We always aim to inspire on Cbeebies, and I hope that Bitz & Bob will encourage a new generation of engineers.

“Bitz is a wonderful female role model – she is full of creative ideas and energy that will take our viewers on adventures that we know will fire their imaginations.”

In 2016, the UK Commission for Employment & Skills disclosed that 43 per cent of Stem vacancies were hard to fill.

Just 23 per cent of all people working in Stem occupations, and only 24 per cent of Stem graduates, are women, according to Wise, which campaigns for greater female representation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Ahead of the start of the series on Cbeebies today, children were surveyed for their views on the careers available to different genders.

The researchers found many of the four to eight-year-olds didn’t think women could be builders, footballers or lorry drivers.

When asked which jobs were for boys, 40 per cent of 1,000 children polled said doctors, with 44 per cent stating that engineering was a career for men.