Meet Lisa Harvey-Smith:
FIGHTING FOR WOMEN IN STEM by Stuart Corner
O
released the STEM Equity Monitor
TEN YEAR ROADMAP TO GENDER EQUALITY
2021, its second national data report
Office of the Women in STEM Ambassador is hosted
on girls’ and women’s participation in
by the University of NSW where Harvey-Smith is also
science, technology, engineering and
a Professor of Practice. The work of her office is
mathematics (STEM).
underpinned by the Women in STEM Decadal Plan
n Monday 3 May the Government
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
76
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.”
STEM education and careers, raising awareness and
To remedy this her team has developed an evaluation
driving cultural and social change for gender equity.”
guide for women in STEM programs designed to
WOMEN IN SECURITY MAGAZINE