Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) acknowledges the critical role that women have played in advancing Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) in Australia;

(2) notes that despite this, women remain largely underrepresented in STEM disciplines in Australia's schools and universities;

(3) recognises the social and economic benefits of advancing men and women equally through STEM;

(4) supports the need to encourage girls to take an interest in STEM from an early age through greater exposure to, and advancement of, science disciplines in school; and

(5) encourages policies that will enable women and girls to fully realise their potential through STEM at school and university.

It is with huge pride that I begin my remarks by noting that Australian women have some incredible and proud achievements and an incredible and proud history of dominating in the fields of science, technology, engineering and maths. We all know names like Professor Fiona Wood, who invented spray-on skin and continues to do incredible work with burns victims all over the world; Elizabeth Blackburn, the Nobel Prize winning scientist and I think the only Tasmanian to win a Nobel Prize so far; and Dr Marguerite Evans-Galea, the co-founder of Women in Science Australia and an award-winning biomedical researcher at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute. Amongst the younger cohort, I am so pleased to note the achievements of Marita Cheng, our 2012 Young Australian of the Year and the founder of Robogals, and Yassmin Abdel-Magied, a mechanical engineer, founder of Youth Without Borders and the 2015 Queensland Young Australian of the Year. All of these women are incredible achievers who are operating at the global heights of their professions.

While it is critical to celebrate their success, we must also be frank that these remarkable achievements unfortunately do not reflect the share of women in their professions overall. A terrifying statistic, just to get started, is that just 10 per cent of senior science academics in Australia's universities and research institutes are Australian women. I will share some other numbers with the House that bring some of the issues that we are discussing today to light. Of all the Australians today who are working in STEM, less than a third of them are Australian women, and this figure is as low as 14 per cent when we look at the engineering profession. The underrepresentation of women at a professional level comes right back to our education system. We know that in our universities just one in five engineering students are women and 14 per cent of information technology enrolments are women. When we get to our school system, we see where this problem begins. The number of women at the higher levels of our senior schools taking advanced mathematics is about half what it is for young men, and just 1.5 per cent of Australian girls are completing the three key STEM courses, which are advanced maths, physics and chemistry, at their year 12 level. What is even more worrying is that when we look at these numbers we see that they are actually getting worse over time and not better. Just one fact: the share of young women in year 12 who studied physics fell by a third between 1992 and 2009.

These numbers should be incredibly concerning to every person in this country. They should be worrying to us because we have very clear evidence here that the best and brightest young Australians are not breaking through in these key professions in science, technology, engineering and maths. When we see women get into these professions, we see them make incredible breakthroughs. Think of all the inventions, the patents, the new medicines and the breakthrough technologies that could have been invented by fantastic, high-achieving Australian women who are not being represented in these professions today.

There is a big human capital argument and a big economic argument here, but I want the parliament to address this issue because I believe it is a fundamental social justice issue when we look to the decades ahead. One of the things that we know about the way in which our labour market is changing—and it is changing very rapidly—is that people who have these qualifications are shooting to the top of the labour market, and they are doing better and better year by year. We know that we see spectacular jobs growth in the areas of our economy that require STEM qualifications. There are many factors. Sometimes people talk about three times as much job growth in STEM professions as in non-STEM professions. What we are seeing here with these facts is that we are creating a situation where the best, highest-paying and most senior roles in our society are ones where women are inevitably going to be dramatically less represented, and I believe that the underrepresentation of women in STEM is one of the top feminist issues of our time.

Labor is the only party in Australia that is talking about this problem and that has a plan to address it. I am so proud when I look at the policy announcement that Labor has made on this front so far. What the Leader of the Opposition has talked about is wiping out the student debt for 100,000 young people who graduate with these qualifications, introducing 25,000 teacher scholarships, and increasing the number of students completing their STEM studies by 20,000 graduates a year from 2020. All of these policies will be implemented with a particular focus on bringing more women into these professions, where they belong.

We have to address this problem. If we allow it to continue, we will pay a hugely heavy toll. (Time expired)

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is there a seconder for this motion?

Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion.

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am delighted to be speaking on this topic as the Assistant Minister for Science, because it is something that falls well within the portfolio of Industry, Innovation and Science, and Science in particular, where I have responsibility. But I am also very keen to talk on this subject because I am an engineer, and at this point of time I am the only female engineer in the Australian parliament. So I think that gives me an opportunity to put a very unique perspective—certainly to provide some background information on STEM but also to talk about what it is like to actually be a female engineer and to address some of the issues that are so important to us going forward.

I would like to start by just putting a little bit of perspective around this issue, and that is to look firstly at the decline in the number of students who are actually taking STEM subjects—so science, technology, engineering and maths, and in particular science and maths subjects—at school. If we compare the number of students in 1992 to 2012—so over a 20-year period—there were 30,800 more students in year 2012 than there were in 1992, but there was a significant decrease in the number of students who were studying science and maths subjects. There were 8,000 fewer physics students, 4,000 fewer chemistry students and 12,000 fewer biology students. So what we can see is that there has been a reduction in the number of students overall who are studying science, technology, engineering and maths, and that is without taking into account the gender issues and the significant changes in the number of women who are studying the science and maths subjects.

The percentage of students who are studying advanced and intermediate maths also declined over that period. I think that is another important thing that we need to be mindful of—that is, that many students who were, for example, capable of doing Maths B and C were taking a different level of maths, Maths A. So that put them in a difficult situation—going into, for example, engineering—when they went on to university because they did not have the high-level maths skills that they needed. They had to move straight into bridging courses.

I understand that this is now somewhat common over a number of subjects as well. For example, with chemistry, students who are not taking chemistry subjects at school and wish to study chemistry when they go on to university have to take bridging courses to enable them to at least catch up in their first year of university. Clearly, that makes it significantly more difficult for those students.

The questions are: why is this concerning and why do we need to be mindful of this? The most important issue for me is that whilst we do not know exactly what the jobs of the future will be, we do know that 75 per cent of those jobs will require skills in science, technology, engineering and maths. It is very clear that we must be doing something to increase the take-up rate.

I want to speak briefly about some of the stats for women, because they are not particularly good. In academia, we see that the more senior the researcher the less likely the researcher is to be a woman. At senior levels, the figure sits around just 17 per cent. Participation rates for women are lower than those of men for all national competitive grants schemes. The proportion of female undergraduate and postgraduate students in STEM fields has barely changed over the past decade. In 2013, when considering domestic enrolment, female students made up 32.4 per cent of undergraduate STEM enrolments and 36.1 per cent of postgraduate STEM enrolments.

What we do know—and I heard the member for Hotham talk about what happens at the university level—is that the critical time for people to take up STEM skills is actually years 5 to 8. That is where we must be targeting. That is where we must be making sure that we engage with these young people, particularly women, and demonstrate to them that there is a real opportunity if they were to continue the interest that they have in maths and science.

I am a very strong advocate of making sure that we start that pipeline early. There are many examples of where we have had very valuable science and maths programs implemented at the very early ages, particularly in Germany. I would encourage those opposite—and, in fact, everyone in the House—to have a look at the German programs to see what we can learn out of them, to make sure that we are starting our students early to understand science, technology, engineering and maths.

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to support this private member's motion and to thank my colleague the member for Hotham for bringing it to the House. Of course we know that women have played a crucial role in advancing science, technology, engineering and maths in Australia. I have spoken on numerous occasions in this place on the good work of pioneering women in Australian science—women like Dorothy Hill, a geologist and researcher most famous for becoming the first professor at an Australian university, and Ruby Payne-Scott, the first female radioastronomer and a pioneer in her field, contributing to some of the earliest discoveries in radioastronomy research. Ruby got her first big break during the Second World War while all the men were busy abroad. Ruby went to work for the CSIR, now the CSIRO, helping to develop top-secret radar technology that would help defend Australia from the threat of invasion. After the war, Ruby went on to make path-breaking discoveries in radioastronomy, including in three categories of solar bursts.

Despite the good work of these trailblazers and many women that came after them, Australia still struggles to reach its full potential. That is because women are not fully represented in all levels of STEM in Australia and they are not on parity with men. We know that only one-third of university graduates in a STEM course are women and only 28 per cent of Australia's STEM-qualified workers are women. The number of students studying maths and science in high school is falling and the gap between boys and girls is getting wider. In 2013, only six per cent of girls studied year 12 advanced maths.

There are a number of barriers. When it comes to school, these could include expectations of teachers, parents and peers—as well as self-expectations. It could be the lack of female role models in STEM disciplines or the presence of stereotypes portrayed in the media which can make it harder for girls to imagine a career in STEM. But when we deny girls the opportunity to develop an interest in maths, science and technology we are denying ourselves the access to the next batch of Dorothy Hill and Ruby Payne Scott and the would-be contributions that they will make to science and in STEM in Australia.

The trends seen in primary school and secondary school continues well into adulthood, with women comprising just 17 per cent of senior academics in Australian universities and research institutes. In the last sitting week I was very pleased to help launch the SAGE Athena SWAN Charter pilot, an initiative introduced by the Academy of Science and the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering to improve gender-equity policies at our universities, scientific and medical institutions. It is pleasing to see an initiative designed to independently evaluate the participation of women, in STEM, in key Australian institutions. I know, as the co-convener of the Parliamentary Friendship Group of Women in Science, Maths and Engineering, together with the member for Higgins, this pilot is an incredibly important time that will shed a light on the underrepresentation of women in STEM but, importantly, give a pathway of how to address that.

It is clear that Australia, as a nation, will fail to reach its productive potential until women can reach theirs. It will not be achieved until we start focusing and teaching more girls in STEM skills. That is why I am also very pleased that Labor has announced a positive plan to get more young people, particularly women, interested in these vital subjects. If elected to government, we will encourage more students to take up STEM degrees by writing off the HECS-HELP debt of 100,000 prospective university students in this field. Indeed, we have also announced that there will be, in the selection process, a focus on encouraging women to be a part of this. We will also make sure that every young person has a chance to learn about computer coding at school. We will boost the skills of 25,000 primary and secondary school teachers with new funding for STEM teacher training.

It is really important to engage with all students at a very young level about the importance of coding, because it is the language of the future. These are smart investments and the benefits will multiply for generations. We need to equip young women with the knowledge they need to get the jobs of the future. I commend the motion to the House.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am speaking on this motion, as I welcome the opportunity to support any measure that seeks to encourage more people into science, technology, engineering and mathematics. I note that the substantive point of this motion is to encourage more women into the area of STEM. To guarantee tomorrow the living standard that we have today we need more money and more people investing in STEM. STEM studies and careers are investments in the future prosperity of the nation. Achieving a 50-50 split of a male-female divide in every profession would be a lovely situation. The simple fact is policy directive should not be held hostage to ideological shackles. The best talent should get the best support, male or female. It is interesting to note that women's progress in breaking into STEM has slowed down in recent decades, and it is not only in Australia.

Using US data for degrees conferred on women, the number of women in computer science peaked, in the US, in 1983 at 37 per cent. Data from the American Physical Society on the percentage of women receiving degrees as a percentage of all degrees awarded shows that 2000 was when women peaked at 36 per cent for STEM and 21 per cent for physics. The question is: does it make a difference if it is a woman or a man? The other consideration is: where, when and how are we ever likely to get the gender balance in STEM? What is the practical implementation of good intentions, like quotas? Is it saying no to talented males?

Short-term positive discrimination can have long-term negative outcomes. Data around STEM points to one conclusion. There are areas of science where women are interested and there are other areas where they are not. Science has many subcategories. To hold up some STEM categories as being more valid than other science categories is wrong and foolish.

It is true that, as a country, we need to lift our rates of female participation in the workforce. Increasing female participation and employment rates is one of the lowest-hanging fruits of economic growth and one of the most fertile. The positive spillover effects from more women in work are many and varied but, crucially, they impact on every corner of our society. STEM is the foundation upon which a high-value-added, high-tech economic strategy must be built. If we are to stay competitive in our region and in the world then our country must simply become more proficient at STEM subjects at every level—primary, secondary and tertiary.

The simple fact is, as this place's only PhD-qualified scientist, I have long advocated and espoused the benefits of funding scientific research. Studies have shown a positive return on money invested in research and development activities. This allows our scientists the latitude to dream and explore the outer limits of their understanding, leading to society enjoying an improved standard of living. Australians are innovators. We need only look at CSIRO as an example of an institution that punches above its weight and whose endeavours have touched us all. It was Australian scientists at the CSIRO that gave us wi-fi. West Australian Nobel-Prize-winning researchers also discovered the link between certain bacteria and stomach ulcers, which led to a new wave of treatment.

We should be focusing on skills, needs, interests and requirements, and not on gender. I hope in my next great endeavour—that of trying to remove the prohibitions on nuclear energy in Australia—that I am joined by many fine female scientists.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very happy to rise in support of this motion brought to the House by my colleague the member for Hotham in support of STEM, and particularly women in STEM, in Australia. Science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, are key to our nation's prosperity. International research suggests that 75 per cent of the fastest-growing occupations now require STEM skills, and employment in STEM occupations is projected to grow at at least twice the pace of other occupations.

While STEM occupations are growing at a staggering pace, women remain largely underrepresented in STEM disciplines in Australia's schools and universities and in the workforce. Women comprise more than half of science PhD graduates and early career researchers but just 17 per cent of senior academics in Australian universities and research institutes. According to Professionals Australia's 2014 position paper, Women in STEM in Australia, only 28 per cent of the employed STEM-qualified Australian workforce aged 15 and years and over in 2011were female, compared to 55 per cent of all other fields in the tertiary-qualified population. They also identified that in Australia women hold a relatively low share of STEM undergraduate degrees, with just 33 per cent of tertiary qualifications awarded to women in STEM fields, and that the pay gap in the professional, scientific and technical services industry was a staggering 30.1 per cent in 2013.

Effective, coordinated policy solutions are required to address the multiple, interrelated issues that lead to women's underrepresentation in STEM fields. Occupational segregation—defined as the overrepresentation of women in low-paying occupations—has been identified as an issue that must be overcome. Implementing improved education programs to encourage the participation of women in occupations that are often traditionally though of as male roles is one possible solution. Breaking down cultural stereotypes about what a science career entails has also been identified as a way to increase the number of women in STEM occupations. Research shows that in Australia 18.6 per cent of boys undertake STEM subjects in their final year of school, compared with 13.8 per cent of girls. A reason for the difference was found to be a lack of understanding and encouragement from teachers and parents for girls to participate in STEM subjects.

When it comes to women's participation in STEM occupations and the gender pay gap, Professionals Australia have flagged the following issues as significant obstacles for women There are the financial penalties when returning to work after women take career breaks to start a family. There are issues around women leaving a profession because of difficulties balancing family and career responsibilities due to the lack of workplace flexibility. There is a lack of women in leadership roles in STEM fields, and there are discriminatory practices within the workplace, from hiring practices which disadvantage women to the underrating of female employees' contributions in assessments for promotion. There is no doubt in my mind, and indeed in the minds of my colleagues, that much more needs to be done to tackle this inequity and, thankfully, a number of important initiatives are under way.

It was a great pleasure to be in parliament last month at the launch of one such initiative—the Science in Australia Gender Equity, or SAGE, pilot program, as part of the Athena SWAN Charter. This is an initiative aimed at reaching gender parity in science leadership and it bases its work around the Athena SWAN Charter, which was developed in the UK in 2005. I am super excited that my University of Newcastle is one of the 32 Australian universities that has signed up to be part of that SAGE pilot program and, indeed, the University of Newcastle was already cited as an employer of choice for gender equity in 2014.

In closing, it is clear that STEM is a central part of our future and policy that enables women and girls to fully realise their potential in STEM at school, university and the workforce is vital. I am proud of the directions that the Labor Party is taking in this area and I thank the member for Hotham for bringing this to the House's attention. I look forward to a time when books like 12 Awesome Women of Science: You've Never Heard Of become a historical relic as women who have truly rocked science in this nation become part of our everyday appreciation of scientists in Australia.

Fiona Scott (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I rise to bring to the House the critical role that women perform in advancing science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Disappointingly, the evidence confirms women are underrepresented in these critical disciplines. Researcher Kelly Roberts noted in her 2014 report to the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute that the proportion of Australian women in education and employment in fields of mathematics, computing and engineering is particularly low. She observes that 'Only 28 per cent of employed STEM-qualified Australian workforce aged 15 and over were female in 2011,' with this figure as low as 15 per cent in engineering. She goes on to say that in the very same year '33 per cent of tertiary qualifications were awarded to Australian women in STEM fields.' If the Australian economy is to transition into a smart economy, and one that advances and works in advanced manufacturing of goods and technology, we need all Australians to possess world-leading STEM skills. Frankly, it is unacceptable for women to be left behind, despite the chronic under-representation of women at the forefront of pivotal scientific breakthroughs.

In an opinion piece published last Wednesday in The Australian, the Chair of Universities Australia and the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Sydney, Professor Barney Glover, highlighted the importance to the national interest of the work being undertaken by quantum physicist Michelle Simmons. He says:

Simmons, a professor at the University of NSW, recently added the CSIRO Eureka Prize … to her impressive list of accolades. Yesterday—

on 6 October—

her team, including Andrew Dzurak, announced a profound advance: they have cleared the final hurdle in making a silicon quantum computer, bringing the promise of unbelievable processing speeds much closer.

He went on to note:

This game-changing discovery places Australia at the front of the international race to make quantum computing a reality.

This is exciting news. Professor Glover's observations illustrate how women in Australia are leading the world in pivotal STEM advances. The achievement of women in STEM fields emphasises the profound importance of addressing this important challenge at the national and regional level.

In my electorate of Lindsay, I am proud to inform parliament that the University of Western Sydney is taking steps to redress the STEM decline amongst women in a meaningful and generationally impactful way. Under the direction of Professor Barney Glover, the university has developed and fully costed detailed plans for the Western Sydney Science Centre. Drawing on the best practice internationally and domestic examples, the university is seeking $21.3 million in government support to create the centre and to refurbish a 6,000-square metre facility on its Penrith campus. Once completed in 2017, the Western Sydney Science Centre will provide highly educational, fully immersive, hands-on STEM experience for early childhood development and for school-aged children, as well as pivotal professional development and resources for teachers and professionals alike. The centre will focus in particular on engaging with young women, Indigenous people and socially disadvantaged people who may not have had access to such a quality education.

Western Sydney will be home to Australian innovation. I would like to commend the vision of the Catholic Diocese of Parramatta, which will be creating the first STEM school in Australia, which will be part of the Sydney Science Park at Luddenham, a facility that will have 12,200 high-skilled jobs in places like biopharmaceuticals and advanced manufacturing, and 10,000 research positions. The exciting thing that the Catholic diocese is working towards is having from pre-K through to primary school, high school, university and postgraduate qualifications instead. This will all form part of an innovation corridor.

I am proud to talk on this motion, I am proud of the direction that Western Sydney is taking and I am proud to be part of a government that is providing the infrastructure that will provide the education to the people of Western Sydney.

Debate adjourned.