
Women Warriors in STEM
In a culture based on gender equality, why are we shying away from the fact that women are still significantly the minority in STEM fields?
The stagnation of women entering STEM fields has been masked by government funding and a gender inclusive consensus. In a society where women’s intellect is generally undisputed, we still see a massive disciplinary divide of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, commonly known as STEM.
But the desire for change is in our DNA. As STEM advocators and simply two women engaging with their passions, sisters Juliet and Olivia Gobran combat gender biases in STEM everyday. “My degree doesn’t really appeal to females. So I’m definitely the minority,” says Juliet, a Bachelor of Information Technology and Arts student. She explains that she finds herself amongst one or two other females in her classes.
And Juliet’s experience is not unique. Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) Executive Director, Dr Wafa El-Adhami, explains that these gender disparities formed from past notions. “If you look at historical experiences and literature, women were the minority simply because men were seen to be the ones suited to perform these activities and functions.” She says that the past biases of men having biologically better capabilities in the sciences and math fields are now entrenched in modern society’s views.
According to a recent report by the Australian Government, women comprised less than 15 per cent of engineering and related technologies undergraduate course completions in 2016. This coincides with women representing only 17 per cent of the STEM qualified population. Yet the government has already provided $8 million to support STEM gender equity initiatives and we are still seeing this divide. “The community keeps saying ‘we’ve got all of these legislations and laws about anti-discrimination, and we have all these highly capable eminent women scientists, yet we are still seeing the gap’,” Dr Wafa says.
“It’s about who you surround yourself with growing up and whether your family is open to those views. That will have an influence,” Bachelor of Science student, Olivia, says. “It can end up being that girls play with dolls and kitchens, and boys play with trains and cars and Lego and generally ‘engineering’ toys. It’s implanting STEM in boy’s brains in the early age,” explains Juliet. Dr Wafa further explains that young girls may not choose to go into STEM areas as they have been told that due to their ‘lack of aptitude or abilities’, it’s not an area they can perform in.
Due to this concern, The Australian Academy of Science and The Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering partnered to create SAGE. SAGE’s vision is to improve these gender disparities in STEM through an Athena SWAN model. “Athena SWAN holds organisations to account by asking ‘are you really doing a very good job?’, or ‘are you really not attending to that’.” Dr Wafa explains that the approach is essentially a cascade of accountability from the top to the bottom of an organisation, celebrating organisations who have adopted a gender inclusive workplace through a bronze award.
Consequently, a gender inclusive society from initiatives like these have benefits that don’t just reside to women. The Grattan Institute has estimated that an extra six per cent of women in the workforce could add up to $25 billion to Australia’s Gross Domestic Product. “When we work in diverse teams it actually brings about more ideas, collaboration, opens up avenues for innovation and there is evidence that there is a return on investment when you have the participation of men and women equally,” Dr Wafa says.
Meanwhile, the SAGE team hopes that more members will join their journey and start improving gender equity in their organisations. “In 2018 we celebrated 15 awardees with bronze, in September this year we also announced the awardees for another 13 institutions. So hopefully by the end of the year we will be announcing even more awardees,” Dr Wafa says.
In the meantime, Juliet and Olivia believe that the career professions a young girl should enter should be entirely her choice. “You don’t have to go into physics or mathematics if you know you’re not into it,” Juliet says. “But my advice for girls would be that if you have an interest in anything, start learning it!,” Olivia says.
