中文Every industry likes to say it has a ‘people problem.’ The print and graphic communications sector actually has the data to prove it — and a group called Girls Who Print just handed the rest of us the receipt. Their 2026 Industry Insights Report is not a feel-good diversity pamphlet. It is a clear-eyed map of what women across the global print workforce say they need in order to build a career, and to stay in one.
The numbers behind it are worth slowing down for. The report combines 210 responses to the organisation’s 2025-2026 survey with recurring themes drawn from 242 applications to the Girls Who Print Mentorship Program. From that, the group distilled ten Industry Insights spanning mentorship, technology, leadership, entrepreneurship, workforce development and career advancement. That is a rare thing: research built not just from what people tick in a survey, but from what they actually wrote when asking for help.
Mentorship is no longer a ‘nice to have’
The headline finding is the one every print boss should tape to the wall: mentorship has become a strategic tool for retaining talent, not just a warm-up act for new hires. In a trade where experienced operators are retiring faster than they are being replaced, the shops that pair newcomers with someone who has been through the fire are the ones keeping their people. It is cheaper than recruiting, and it works better than a poster about ‘culture.’
The second thread is technology fluency. Girls Who Print identifies it as a growing differentiator for future leaders. Translation: the next generation of print managers will not be judged on how well they can run a press alone, but on how comfortably they can sit between the press, the software, the data and the client. The women surveyed get that intuitively. The question is whether their employers are building paths for them to develop it.
Pathways, ownership and a seat at the table
Two more findings hit close to home for an industry that has historically been run by a very specific kind of person. Respondents pointed to clearly defined career pathways as essential for attracting people in the first place — vague ‘you’ll figure it out’ trajectories simply do not compete with industries that hand you a ladder. And the research found women increasingly interested in entrepreneurship: building their own businesses rather than waiting for a promotion that may never come.
Deborah Corn, Executive Director of Girls Who Print, said the perspectives gathered will shape the organisation’s future programs and give the broader industry a look at its own workforce priorities. That framing matters. This is not a report asking for a favour. It is a report offering employers, educators and associations a free resource to fix recruitment, retention and professional development — at a moment when print businesses are openly struggling with workforce shortages and succession planning.
The emotional core
Strip away the methodology and there is a human story here. A woman joins print, likes it, gets good at it, and then hits a wall — no clear next step, no one who looks like her in the room where decisions get made, no mentor who can say ‘here’s how I did it.’ She leaves, or she starts her own shop. Multiply that by a few hundred and you have a workforce crisis dressed up as a ‘skills shortage.’
Girls Who Print is arguing, with evidence, that the fix is relationship-shaped. Pair people. Teach them the technology. Show them the ladder. Let them build. It is not revolutionary. It is just what good industries have always done — and what print, squeezed by automation and an ageing workforce, cannot afford to skip.
The free report is available to anyone willing to read it. The cost of not reading it will be paid in vacant roles.
Source: INKISH.NEWS, 8 September 2026.
