fighting for women in STEM

Meet Lisa Harvey-Smith:

FIGHTING FOR WOMEN IN STEM

by Stuart Corner

On Monday 3 May the Government released the STEM Equity Monitor 2021, its second national data report on girls’ and women’s participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

It showed signs of progress. The proportion of women enrolled in undergraduate and postgraduate STEM courses at universities increased from 34 percent in 2015 to 36 percent in 2019. The proportion of women working across all STEM-qualified industries increased from 24 percent in 2016 to 28 percent in 2020.

However, much more must be done, the Government said. “Significantly more change is needed to achieve our joint vision for gender equity in STEM in Australia by 2030.”

One woman plays a key role in efforts to achieve that change: Professor Lisa Harvey-Smith. She is Australia’s inaugural Women in STEM Ambassador, appointed for two years in 2018, re-appointed in 2020 and charged with “advocating for girls and women in STEM education and careers, raising awareness and driving cultural and social change for gender equity.” TEN YEAR ROADMAP TO GENDER EQUALITY

Office of the Women in STEM Ambassador is hosted by the University of NSW where Harvey-Smith is also a Professor of Practice. The work of her office is underpinned by the Women in STEM Decadal Plan and the Government’s Advancing Women in STEM strategy, announced in April 2019. The Decadal Plan was developed by the Australian Academy of Science in partnership with the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering, and launched in April 2019.

Harvey-Smith told Women in Security that, useful as the STEM Equity Monitor is, she is trying to gather more data to evaluate Australia’s progress on getting more women into STEM.

“There are more than 300 women in STEM programs trying to get girls engaged in STEM across Australia, but only two of those more than 300 programs are actually being evaluated, tested and with evaluation results publicly posted somewhere. So we are scrambling to find out what’s working.”

To remedy this her team has developed an evaluation guide for women in STEM programs designed to

determine how these initiatives are progressing and whether they are meeting their targets and their goals. “Then we will be able to share best practice,” she says. “We’re driving that very strongly.”

She is also working to tackle the lack of women in STEM at its source: genderbased attitudes, beliefs and role models that are inculcated in children from their earliest years.

“I’ve spoken to more than 11,000 teachers across Australia in the last two years about gender equity in the classroom, and how to break down social stereotypes because young people are so affected by our social stereotypes,” she says.

“Kids are given different signals, depending on gender. It’s no wonder they go down different paths. So we’re trying to get young people, the parents and teachers engaged as well.”

TACKLING GENDER BIAS AT ITS SOURCE

To this end she’s been given $1.5m by the government for the Future You initiative: a web-based awareness raising campaign, featuring cartoons and animated characters in STEM roles.

“These are STEM professions that kids can aspire to be and they are diverse. We’ve tried to represent some really exciting future careers so that young people can understand that careers like cybersecurity, robotics engineer, Moon to Mars Mission director are real jobs they can actually get in Australia.

There is not yet a Future You character with a cybersecurity role, but she says one is on the cards, and the program is aimed not just at children but at their parents and teachers.

“A lot of people would be scared by words like cybersecurity, programming, supercomputing. But, once you get into them, they’re not that complicated. They are just specialties that people can learn. They are not associated with fear or dread.”

While getting women into STEM might well be a challenge that starts in kindergarten, there’s another challenge in the workplace, says Harvey-Smith: keeping them there and advancing them.

She says more educational programs are needed, and while progress has been made in the public sector and large organisations, much remains to be done in the SME space.

CHANGING WORKPLACE ATTITUDES

“Attitudinal change has to come through education. There needs to be a lot more educational programs in workplaces. When I joined CSIRO 12 years ago, there was very little discussion and acknowledgement of these issues in the workplace.

“When I left people were discussing these things in their team meetings: how to create inclusive environments, how rules had changed to be more flexible, making parental leave equal between the genders. We need to make those conversations part of our corporate environment, even in small businesses. That’s really important.”

She acknowledges small business cannot have resources dedicated to gender equality, but is encouraged that the Workplace Gender Equality Agency — an agency created by the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 charged with promoting

and improving gender equality in Australian workplaces — has opened up to allow businesses with fewer than 100 employees to report their gender equality data (reporting is mandatory for businesses with more than 100 people).

She is also working with employers and with government “to try and pull policy levers and change systems that are failing, women’s progression into leadership.” “I’ve spoken to more than 11,000 teachers across Australia in the last two years about gender equity in the classroom, and how to break down social stereotypes because young people are so affected by our social stereotypes, kids are given different signals, depending on gender. It’s no wonder they go down different paths.”

EVALUATING GENDER EQUITY INITIATIVES

One of the Office of Women Stem’s main initiatives is its National Evaluation Guide for STEM Gender Equity Programs. Harvey-Smith says it is now being used to evaluate applications for government funding under Women in STEM and entrepreneurship grant program that provides grants between $5,000 and $250,000 for projects that increase women’s and girls’ participation in STEM and entrepreneurship.

“Organisations that apply for those grants, and are successful, use the evaluation guide to plan and evaluate their programs. Then will take those evaluations and share them with the community and figure out what works. So in the next round of the

same funding program, we can support the ones that have proved to be most effective.”

Harvey-Smith is no stranger to the challenges facing women in a male-dominated workplace. She’s achieved her career goals in a majority male environment.

She’s a leading astronomer and astrophysicist, a realisation of her childhood goal, and the culmination of a career path that started with her joining her local astronomical society as a teenager.

“I was the only young woman in my local astronomical society. I was almost the only woman doing my degree,” she says. “There were young men sitting there in my maths classes and my physics classes, and just a handful of women. In physics and astrophysics I was often the only woman in the room.

“I did encounter overt sexism, and people commenting about women’s capabilities, ‘joking’, of course, in quotes. I was selected for my University Challenge team at my PhD Institute. One colleague, a young man who failed to get on the team, told me in no uncertain terms, I only got on the team because I was a woman, even though we just sat a test together to get on the team and I clearly had outranked him.”

When studying for her PhD, Harvey-Smith had a picture behind her desk of women astronomers at Harvard University. “One of my cohort when I was away from my desk, wrote ‘get back in the kitchen’ across it.”

UNCOVERING UNCONSCIOUS BIAS

Probably most women in STEM have similar stories of overt sexism, but the Office of Women in Stem is working to understand if there are more subtle, and potentially career-limiting biases against women: in the assessment of applications for funding for STEM projects, or applications to use facilities. HarveySmith says overseas research suggests this could result in a bias of 10-15 percent against female applicants.

“There’s a lot of research about this. We can definitely see from international data the bias is there, but we’re going to do an Australian study so we can prove exactly what’s happening. And then make changes so that everyone gets a fair go. “We’re working with CSIRO, ANSTO and some of the major scientific organisations across Australia who have scientific facilities like telescopes, the synchrotron, supercomputers. We’ve asked them to remove the names from applications for funding to use their facilities.

“We’re doing a two-year study to compare the results before and after that change was made to see if there is any unconscious bias.”

WHAT INDIVIDUAL WOMEN CAN DO

No matter how successful these programs are, it will be a long time, if ever, before women in the workplace cease to face sexism and gender-based discrimination, and Harvey-Smith offers some advice for women working in STEM.

“It’s important to look after yourself emotionally and realise that it’s not a deficiency in you, it’s a deficiency in the system,” she says.

“Once you are senior enough you can you have enough privilege in a position like mine to be finally able to actually tackle the system. But if you are very junior, early in their career, and try to do that, it’s very debilitating.

“So I would say fighting for what you see as justice, fighting for a better system is great, but don’t let it take everything away from you emotionally. That’s a very common thing that happens. And people drop out because they get very alienated from the system.

“We can take steps as individuals to improve our workplaces, our sphere of influence, and to fight against some of those systems. You’ve just got to read the Women in STEM Decadal Plan and see what needs changing and pick one thing. Taking action is really empowering.”

womeninstem.org.au/

www.womeninstem.org.au/futureyou/

womeninstem.org.au/national-evaluation-guide/