What action will you take for equality?

By Professor Elaine Wong, Associate Dean (Diversity and Inclusion)

Science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) are central to the creation of new technologies and knowledge-based industries and no one, irrespective of their gender, culture, religion, race or political views should ever be excluded. Despite awareness of the barriers that affect the participation of women in the tertiary education sector, the pace of change has been slow.

Professor Elaine Wong

To address this issue, in 2018 Melbourne School of Engineering introduced an academic recruitment round open only to women. This was an important ‘call to action’ to create more female role models for our students and postdoctoral researchers, diversify our thinking and encourage greater participation of women in leadership roles.

The School received a staggering number of applications (402!), rich with talent. Due to the significant response, the School appointed seven women, offering a further two roles to women than originally planned. Although these appointments provided a small boost to the proportion of female continuing academics at the School (from 25 to 29 per cent), the recruitment created a lasting impact and demonstrated MSE’s commitment to parity. Subsequent rounds of academic recruitment had a far greater participation and success from female applicants.

“The Mentoring@MSE Programme gave me the time and to space tackle hurdles to career progression in a truly supportive environment. Additionally, I’m proud to co-chair MSE’s Early Career Academic Network to nurture and support researchers in the fields of engineering and IT. Initiatives such as these will continue to pave the way and encourage more woman into STEM disciplines and achieve gender equality” said Dr Brooke Farrugia, who was hired as part of the women-only round of recruitment in 2019.

Dr Brooke Farrugia

Over the past two years, the recruitment initiatives have been scaffolded with our School’s significant commitment to our new Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan to minimise career interruptions, support career development and progression, encourage flexible working and promote leadership at senior levels for women. The School is genuinely committed to changing the makeup of our workforce. A workforce that truly reflects the society we serve - as educators, innovators and enablers of the next-generation of engineers and IT professionals.

Today, Melbourne School of Engineering is proud we have achieved gender parity at the Lecturer academic level. But because we know from our own data that we will lose women from roles lost at every stage of their professional career, we are focusing our efforts on retention and success to achieve a sustained transformation. Our key priority is to invest in our people to allow room to thrive and grow, while nurturing a collaborative culture that not only celebrates a diversity in skills, backgrounds and approaches, but one which is inclusive of these differences.

Guided by the University’s Sage Athena SWAN action plan, the national Women in STEM Decadal Plan and the MSE Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, we have a shared vision and an action plan to combat generational under-representation through a collective approach, from the most senior of leadership through to the individual level.

Collectively, we can each help create an equal world.

So while we recognise and celebrate our female-identifying University community making a difference in engineering, IT and other STEM related fields, we must not forget to shine a spotlight on the continuing systemic challenges in everything we do; these include challenges that impede greater female representation, retention and success.

In reflecting upon these challenges, my question to you is simple – what action will you take for equality?