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5 tips for getting girls into STEM for good
The gender imbalance in STEM fields is well documented. The need for more women in physics, engineering and computer science-related professions – for example – is being pushed by universities, industry and, in this election cycle at least, politicians.
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As a girl who did Chemistry, Programming, Advanced Maths, Calculus and other such things in my undergraduate degree in the 70’s, I now look back and find that there were girls in my Pure and Applied maths classes in high school. Not nearly enough of us , but we were there.
We were encouraged by our teachers to go into these more theoretical maths and science subjects.
When my children were approaching their VCE however I was surprised and a little alarmed that their school was pushing VET courses quite forcefully and that I had to steer my children back to maths and sciences. They are now an engineers, a geneticist and a historian, but it was up to me to steer them towards their interests and according to their abilities.
I’m happy to see the government push back towards the core sciences, and encourage more girls in this direction, but we need to ensure that there are real opportunities to pursue an academic or technical career, with equitable pay, equal opportunity in management positions and no career penalisation for taking time out to have a family.
It’s a whole of system approach and a change in mindset. The opportunities that technology offer are not only for increasing business profit, but for offering opportunities to improve social participation in meaningful and alternative ways of working and contributing.