Hackt for Gender Equity in STEM

On Saturday 23rd of March, Civita organised its first Hackt of the year. During three hours, five teams of data scientists, consultants, researchers, students and data enthusiasts collaborated to help organisations reduce the gender gap in the STEM industries.

Why this topic?

Gender equality has generally improved a lot in the past century. Nowadays, in Australia, women and men have theoretically the same rights and opportunities. Despite the legal and social enforcement, women are still underrepresented in most technical fields — Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. More precisely, they represent on average only 16% of the workforce in STEM and the rate decreases with age. Andthis gap starts early: a report from the Australian Human Rights Commission highlights the significance of gender segregation in school and how this could be changed with the family and friends influences and more models in the STEM fields.

Understanding and solving the gender gap in STEM goes beyond offering the same opportunities to every individual. It is about giving all the keys of our most crucial industries to half of the population. Understanding this issue could also maximising the population productivity and boost the economy as a whole: narrowing the gender gap in Australia could potentially boost GDP by 11%. (See our article here to learn more why we chose this topic for our first hackt)

UTS hosted our productive afternoon.

What is an Hackt?

A Hackt is a synergy between hacking and acting.

It can take two forms:

1. Designing a data-centric solution to help social organisations and communities.
2. Telling a story with data released by public entities about a particular topic.

Who was there?

• Passiona Cottee was our speaker. Data Scientist and woman in STEM herself, she shared with us her story and what the gender gap in STEM means to her,
• Mentors were helping the teams progressing in the right direction and keeping the time on track. (Hey! Want to become a mentor? Send us an email at community@civita.tech and tell us more about that!)
• and, of course, the teams themselves! Fun fact: around 40% of the participants registered had never been to a hackathon before.

Passiona and Dan gave feedbacks to the team.

What were the solutions?

We had three challenges: two were real-life challenges to help organisations tackle the gender gap in STEM, one was our Open Data Challenge.

• Product Women: the Surge team used the Meetup API to build a Dashboard and help PW understanding better the profiles of their members and who come to their events.
• Code Like a Girl: three teams came up with data strategies and data analysis of the organisation. Different angles were taken: for example, the Rookies team decided to look at it from a socio-ecomomic point of view.
• WGEA (Workplace Gender Equality Agency): the Quiet Spyder team used the new datasets released from the agency and tried to explain us where do the gender pay gaps come from.

Getting ready for a three hours of hackthing.

What’s next?

One key value of Civita is to create a long term impact. The solutions suggested during the hackt will be implemented with the organisations and the open data challenge will be shared in coordination with the Quiet Spyder team. (Stay tuned on our medium page or our blog)

Our next Hackt is in June and will focus on the Access to Education.

How can I join?

Receive all our updates, articles and announcements by leaving your details here.

We always welcome suggestions: share you ideas with community@civita.tech.