Rebecca Bennett (she/her)

There is an urgency in Australia around addressing the question as to why there is a lack of women in STEM leadership positions. Previous research has engaged with this concept, but statistics on women entering leadership have not dramatically shifted (Ladkin & Probert, 2019; Roberts, 2014; Rice, 2017; Still, 2006; White, 2015). This phenomenon aligns with Australia's national gender pay gap, which is currently at 13% (Australian Government, 2022), meaning women earn substantially less than men.

Based on a qualitative study, this presentation highlights gender (in)equity and women's experiences with STEM leadership in Western Australia's private sector. Showcasing emergent themes, and based on semi-structured interviews, the presentation reports on women's narratives about their opportunities and challenges in STEM. Findings will be particularly useful for educational stakeholders and decision makers in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors.

Poor numeracy/quantitative skills (QS) development is a widespread issue across Australian tertiary education. Lack of fundamental QS can impede students' progression in STEM degrees, and disadvantage individual students across other domains of life (e.g., financial literacy and active citizenship). Our ACDS-funded Diversity in Numbers (DiN) project seeks to evaluate a targeted, course-wide, just-in-time model for undergraduate development of QS. Digital numeracy modules will be designed to scaffold QS development through embedded interactive content and rich automated feedback. Each module targets a core QS concept (e.g., statistical testing, unit conversions, mathematical relationships) and is framed around a published article relevant to unit content, to expand student awareness of numbers as a tool across diverse fields of science. Given the ongoing under-representation of women, LGBTIQA+ people and other minorities in STEM, the selection of journal articles aims to increase students' appreciation of diversity from many different viewpoints, while developing their QS. At a broader level, the project aims to address the ongoing lack of diversity among STEM graduates and within the STEM workforce by enabling students to "see themselves" within published research. Here we will present the design of our research project to assess the success of our pilot DiN modules.

A report from Australia’s Office of the Chief Scientist (2020) outlines that women are valuable to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), but are underrepresented, especially at the higher pay scales. In STEM professions, inequalities regarding a lack of women in leadership positions have been further complicated by the recent impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. This phenomenon aligns with Australia’s national gender pay gap, which is currently at 13.4% (Australian Government, 2021). This presentation reports on insights from pilot interviews in a qualitative research study, which aims to understand women’s perceptions of and experiences with STEM leadership and gender (in) equity in the private sector of Western Australia. Attention will be drawn to the role of the pilot interviews in directing and refining both interview and research questions (Turner, 2010), thereby highlighting women’s narratives about opportunities and challenges in STEM professions. Key interest groups for dissemination of findings are educational stakeholders and decision-making leaders in the private and public sectors.