WOMEN IN EDUCATION

Australia faces a significant challenge to attract and retain a future workforce as STEM-reliant digital technologies, advanced manufacturing and the energy transition reshape society. Picture: iStock

Systemic change is required to overcome barriers for people of diverse backgrounds to develop a full career in science, maths and technology, a high-level review has found.

The Pathway to Diversity in STEM Review found strategic co-ordination was essential to drive “faster and more ambitious progress” after previous efforts had overlapped, were unfocused or had stalled.

“There are many initiatives to increase diversity in STEM, but no central point to bring these together, identify gaps, and measure and share what works,” the review found.

“Urgent action is needed to create safe and inclusive workplaces that value diverse skills and experiences. This is critical to attract and retain diverse people in STEM jobs.”

Australia faces a significant challenge to attract and retain a future workforce as STEM-reliant digital technologies, advanced manufacturing and the energy transition reshape society.

Infrastructure Australia’s Market Capacity Report forecast labour as being the leading capacity constraint for the short-term development of national infrastructure, highlighting the largest shortages for engineers and scientists.

While women in science, maths and technology-qualified positions increased 68 per cent in the decade to 2022, according to the Department of Industry, only 15 per cent of those jobs are held by women.

And it starts young. Girls’ confidence in the subjects is lower overall and young women make up only a quarter of enrolments in Year 12 IT, physics and engineering classes. For every two boys who aspire to a science or tech-related career, only one girl dreams of the same.

Margaret Sheil was a schoolgirl eager to study pure maths when she encountered a roadblock that unwittingly shaped her future career. She is now the Queensland University of Technology Vice Chancellor and a renowned chemistry scholar, but the 1970s all-girls Catholic school she attended did not offer the advanced mathematics she sought to pursue.

“I could have gone and done it at the boys’ school up the road, that’s what they said to us,” Sheil says.

“They just didn’t have it. Thinking back on it, I don’t think anyone could have taught it.”

Then, when it came to university, Sheil was left without the prerequisite of higher-level maths.

‘The drop-off of girls in maths starts really early, and not doing maths limits the options in physics and chemistry and engineering.’

– Professor Margaret Shiel, vice chancellor, Queensland University of Technology

She opted instead to major in chemistry, a subject that would go on to form the basis of a lauded career as a chemist and an academic, including senior roles at the University of Wollongong, as a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering, the Royal Australian Chemical Institute and her role as an inaugural fellow of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Mass Spectrometry.

“Had I done four-unit maths, I would have been able to do what I wanted to do because I got almost full marks in the other one,” Sheil says.

“The drop-off of girls in maths starts really early, and not doing maths limits the options in physics and chemistry and engineering.”

Sheil says QUT has a range of programs to encourage diverse cohorts into STEM opportunities, with camps and role modelling, funding seminars and workshops.

Overall, she says diversity is needed in STEM to avoid bias in research programs and to bring the best minds to the challenges facing society – and, they are terrific jobs.

“It gives you a lot of satisfaction,” she says. “If you’re curious, if you’re practical, if you have good quantitative skills, you can get into not just science but engineering, finance and so on. It gives you options.”

The Pathway to Diversity independent panel found more than $100m had been spent on government initiatives over a decade without denting the overall rate of diversity in the industries.

Chaired by Cicada Innovations chief executive Sally-Ann Williams and presented to the government late last month, the report made 11 recommendations to raise diversity in all forms across Australia’s STEM industries, from early education to addressing stereotypes, harassment and discrimination.

It has a focus on enabling skilled migrants through the immigration system, and First Nations people, who comprise just 1 per cent of people with a university degree in a STEM field.

“Considering the combined effect of the barriers and biased thinking that discourage people from pursuing STEM, it becomes very difficult to put the current landscape down to individual decision-making,” the report said.

It called for every Australian organisation that employed STEM workers to have a publicly available plan to increase attraction, retention and promotion of under-represented cohorts, and to commit to the elimination of bullying, harassment and discrimination.

Pathway to Diversity also recommended the government develop a long-term strategy for STEM inclusion with an advisory board, working with states and territories to improve participation and achievement in STEM skills in schools and universities, and boosting evidence-based programs.

Funding for First Nations scientists and researchers should also be prioritised, it said.

Engineers Australia chief executive Romilly Madew says governments and industry have to act immediately.

“We are suffering a severe lack of diversity in engineering – just 14 per cent of working engineers in Australia are women. If we look down the pipeline, things do not improve – of our engineering graduates, just 19 per cent are women,” Madew says.

“This is at a time when there is huge demand for engineers in the labour market. Addressing the lack of diversity in STEM occupations is critical to lessening current and future skills shortages. The decline in uptake of maths and science subjects in school, and declining commencements in engineering studies in the past decade, are concerning signs for Australia’s engineering workforce pipeline.”

Australian Academy of Science chief executive Anna-Maria Arabia said women in STEM face obstacles to progression, particularly in maths, physics and chemistry.

“There are many reasons for that,” Arabia says. “Women face a range of structural barriers during their careers, but it really does start very early in the education system as well.

“There is not one single bit of evidence that suggests that women are any less able or capable or intelligent to pursue these careers.”

Arabia says evidence-based programs with ongoing evaluation are needed to improve equity, alongside effective data collection and support for cultural change.

The academy welcomes the more expansive and systemic approach to cultivate talent and excellence across all forms of diversity.

‘There is not one single bit of evidence that suggests that women are any less able or capable or intelligent to pursue these careers.’

– Romilly Madew, CEO, Engineers Australia

“To improve our national security, to take advantage of AI and quantum technology, to decarbonise our economy – all of the things that are on the national agenda – underpinning those is a foundation of research and developments or science,” Arabia says.

“We just cannot afford to not put all of our talented minds forward in achieving those national ambitions. They’re too important and too urgent to not enable a very skilled workforce as possible.”

However, new research has found girls’ antipathy to STEM is apparent by the time they are teenagers.

A study from Curtin University found young women in Years 7 through to 10 are less motivated, with more negative attitudes of classroom STEM projects overall. They are also significantly less likely than boys to feel they had received clear instructions.

The research, involving 246 students in 24 classes in government schools, found girls are less likely to reject statements such as: “My teacher gives me time to explain my ideas”, “I like doing STEM projects”, and “I do this STEM subject because I want to, not just because I have to”.

Lead author Professor Rekha Koul says the findings are sadly unsurprising.

“Changing career aspirations is hard,” Koul says. “This is partly because career aspirations begin to form quite early in children’s lives, in primary school, if not earlier.

“Girls and boys can be inhabiting different emotional environments, despite being in the same physical classroom.”

She says current teaching practice does not make use of proven motivators for girls to study STEM, such as increased social value-adding from medicine or environmental protection.

Koul, the School of Education deputy head and discipline lead at STEM Research Group, says interventions to address declining enrolments and gender imbalances would fail without changing the emotional state of the classroom.

With more than four out of five primary school teachers being women, many are “alienated from maths and science and do not want to teach in those areas”, Koul says.

“These are the teachers who influence the most sensitive stages as future career identities develop. It is not just about the classic STEM careers, it is about the need for STEM competencies right throughout the workforce.”

In releasing the report, Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic said the Albanese government is committed to increasing diversity in the STEM sector, “so more Australians can go on to secure, well paid jobs”.

“These reports recommend new pathways to get more women and people from diverse backgrounds into STEM careers,” Husic said. “We need more people skilled up to make the most of the opportunities in the growing science and technology jobs market.”

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