Why STEM should matter to girls.
Madeleine Hanger (Grummet)
Presenter🎙️Journalist✍🏾 Producer ABC Australian Broadcasting Corporation🎙️RN Breakfast 📻Host Human Cogs Pod▶️ Non-Exec Director🧭 Master of Journalism📝 Master of Entrepreneurship🛠️ Founder Girledworld + FutureAmp⚖️
We wish we could candy coat the stats but the numbers just aren't moving - women and girls remain grossly underrepresented in #STEM fields, and according to a recent Australian Government National Innovation and Science Agenda Report only one in four IT graduates and fewer than one in 10 engineering graduates are women.
Further, women occupy fewer than one in five senior positions in Australian universities and research institutes, and represent just one quarter of the STEM workforce overall.
This is a critical problem. Why?
Because STEM matters.
It matters because to secure Australia’s future economy, we need STEM to drive innovation, and a population equipped with the STEM skill-sets, mind-sets and tech-sets to do this.
So we desperately need girls to play a part in this, to step up to STEM, to grow their STEM and enterprise skillsets and mindsets, and to best equip themselves for the future of work.
Currently, 75% of the fastest growing occupations require STEM skills and knowledge, and Australia has a declining rate of STEM-related course completions which have decreased over the past 10 years from 22% to 16%.
This is a problem for us all, because the decline factor in the number of skilled and ready-for-work graduates is creating a ‘digital innovation bottleneck’ within Australian businesses. And across the board there is an urgent need for a workforce that can think creatively, cultivate and apply enterprise skill-sets and embrace STEM to keep up with advancements in technology, ongoing digital disruption and relentless global competition that will render many businesses redundant, and current economic policies obsolete.
To turn this problem around, it will take a concerted, national effort between politicians, educational institutions, industry leaders and businesses, and it will also take a breakdown of the multiple cultural, institutional and organisational barriers that discourage girls and women from studying STEM, and that limit their opportunities to pursue careers in this space.
We need a movement. And it will take time.
But a big part of this is actually showing girls what they can be.
STEM role models matter.
Girls can't be what they can't see.
And don't know what they don't know.
So we need more STEM role models inspiring girls, science teachers, educators, media, entrepreneurs, executives, manufacturers, editors and policy-makers so more girls start to see what they could be and select into the mix.
This is what will start to sweeten the numbers. 💓
At Girledworld we're honoured to have the support and expertise of amazing female STEM mentors talking to and teaching girls STEM, and showing them some of the great careers built on STEM.
You can learn from, meet and have the chance to chat with them at the girledworld SUMMIT at the University of Melbourne's Wade Institute the weekend of June 24/25.
This is a jam-packed weekend of education, empowerment and hands-on learning where you can be inspired by global and local leaders in tech, deep dive coding, hear from extraordinary STEM leaders about how they started, and push your career thinking to reimagine what you and your daughters can do to embrace STEM and equip yourselves for the future of work.
Join us to make the change.