Lack of Investment to Blame for Technological Diversity Imbalance | information age

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The report reveals that there is a gross lack of government investment in STEM gender diversity. Photo: Shutterstock

A damning report on the lack of gender diversity in STEM has dismissed unsubstantiated claims that girls are not choosing to study STEM professions, instead pointing to the significant lack of government support to be the root cause of the problem .

The federal government’s annual pool of about $13 million spent on gender inequality in STEM is well below what is needed.

Spread over three years, that’s $4.3 per year, which, split across the four STEM fields, equates to just $806,000 per year to address gender equity in tech, according to The report. Girl Geek Academies, Enough Talk, published this week.

The report warns that Australia will not live up to its economic and technological potential given that only 36% of women are enrolled in science, technology, engineering and mathematics university courses, and only 12% of technical engineers are women.

He also highlighted a recent Deloitte report on Australian women’s digital entrepreneurship, which saw a return of $1 billion in targeted investments in female-led tech startups.

The reason gender equity is slipping back in tech isn’t because of a lack of evaluation of equity programs, it’s a lack of investment in the solutions we already know work, indicates the report.

Girl Geek Academy went a step further, outlining a number of specific recommendations for change.

These include developing a national action plan to increase diversity in tech, support diversity and inclusion in schools, prioritize women’s participation in STEM, and collect better data. on diversity and inclusion so that participation can be better understood.

Girls and women who are passionate and interested in STEM are crowded out of learning and industry at all stages of their careers because the pipeline is built for men. The industry also fails to provide effective role models for women, according to his research.

The answer lies in getting more girls and women into STEM needs to start at an early age, with bonus points offered to students for studying technology in years 11 and 12, and creating a Guarantee of gender-equitable jobs to ensure the 1.2 million jobs in the industry are gender-equal, suggests the report.

The report’s findings are similar to a report from last year which found that the tech sector continues to lag behind the Australian workforce and comparable professions in terms of female representation, with women accounting for only 31% of workers in the tech workforce.

This compares to 48 per cent of the Australian workforce as a whole.

Deloitte’s ACS Digital Pulse report also found that once women get a job, they are victimized, with nearly two-thirds (64%) of women also experiencing some form of workplace discrimination.

However, the proportion of women in technology is increasing. Between 2021 and 2022, the [NH1]proportion of women in technology occupations increased by 1.85 percentage points.

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) warns that achieving equal participation across professions and sectors will not happen in the lifetime of most working women.

While growing participation in the labor market represents economic equality for women and will lead to increased household incomes, Australia’s gender-segregated workforce will take a long time to change, warned Danielle Wood, CEO of the public policy think tank The Grattan Institute.

Meanwhile, the University of South Australia also released a Women in STEM report in April, which blamed toxic workplaces for driving women out of the industry.

It exposed an ingrained or hostile work culture that associates STEM careers with men and not women and the misguided belief that women (particularly mothers) have different skills than men.

Report co-author Dr Florence Gabriel said the barriers raised by women working in the sector should be a wake-up call as they continue to exacerbate critical labor shortages across the country. STEM industry.

Diversity is not just an ethical concern or a checkbox. According to a recent study of 1,000 companies worldwide, those that rank among the top 25% in gender diversity were found to be 21% more likely to be profitable and 27% more likely to be creative. , said Dr. Gabriel.

The good news is that there are smaller initiatives that are making a difference at the local level, including the recently announced BrainSTEM grant that will allow ACS to provide opportunities for 120 high school girls as well as 30 mentors and teachers to participate in a range of STEM mentoring. programs that aim to direct participants to industry.

Made available through a grant from the federal government, the initiative will run from August to November of this year, providing several opportunities for engagement and learning for participants.

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