The most recent (2023) STEM Equity Monitor stats from the Federal Government reveal that girls make up about a quarter of enrolments in Year 12 information technology, physics and engineering classes, while women make up 37 per cent of enrolments in university STEM courses, and just 17 per cent of VET STEM enrolments.
Significantly, only 15 per cent of STEM-qualified jobs are held by women, just 23 per cent of senior management and 8 per cent of CEOs in STEM-qualified industries are women, and in 2022, the gap between women’s and men’s pay in STEM industries was 17 per cent (or $27,012).
In cutting-edge STEM fields such as artificial intelligence (AI), only one in five professionals (22 per cent) are women.
In response, backed by Telstra Foundation, social enterprise Girl Geek Academy is mobilising to address this galling statistic with the launch of AI High, which aims to ‘empower high school girls by providing them with the necessary digital skills and competencies to pursue digital careers – in the process fostering a new generation of women tech leaders’.
“We’ll be creating a community of high school students making friends, building AI together and preparing themselves for a bright career in technology,” Girl Geek Academy co-founder Lisy Kane says.
“Learning AI is pivotal in closing the gender divide in tech. AI High will enable young women to not only benefit from, but play a leadership role, in the creation of new AI technologies,” Kane, who’s also an experienced leader in AI for game development, says.
At this stage what is envisaged, at least initially, is a community of 2000 high school girls and non-binary young people learning AI together in an exciting pilot program.
“We’re in what we call it the co-design phase, or the research phase, and have been speaking to students, to subject coordinators, career coordinators in schools,” Kane tells EducationHQ.
Because curriculums vary between states and territories, planning at present is diving into what the curriculums look like, where the gaps are, and how the program can fit effortlessly into different jurisdictions.
“AI is obviously a really, really hot topic right now, but it’s also a skill-set they’re going to need to learn, and will be part of the future of work. I don’t see a future where AI will disappear completely.
“So it could be along the lines of an 'Introduction to AI' right up to senior AI, but then having machine learning AI for games and all that’s involved in that area – but it very much depends on what the state curriculum looks like, and that’s where we’ll have to be quite creative to figure out different ways to teach that.”
The most important thing, Kane says, is creating community.
“From what we’ve seen so far, some of the offerings that are available aren’t necessarily conducive to what I would call like a ‘technology workforce’,” she says.
“Some of the offerings are very isolated, you kind of learn on your own, there’s some online offerings that you can do, but it doesn’t actually lead them to be doing project-based work where they actually work with others, and build communities and get excited about it.
“So a big part of what we’ll also be doing is figuring out how to connect a lot of these communities together – so girls especially to create communities where they can support each other, because many of us [now working in the tech industry] know that feeling of being the only kid in the school that wants to do it.”
Game developer and AI expert Lisy Kane says ‘pair programming’ with mates is critical to building new tech, and AI High will connect young people at a national level to work together and meet new friends, regardless of where they live.
Kane says after that they’ll be looking into how they might ensure the program’s long-term sustainability, “and honestly, a lot of that will come from this discovery phase of figuring out what teachers need, what parents need and what the students need as well”.
Having just celebrated its 10-year anniversary, Girl Geek Academy was established when a group of women who were friends and already in the industry, acknowledged that tech has a serious pipeline problem.
Even before high school, they found, there are major hurdles hindering a higher percentage of people other than males being part of the tech sector.
“…it starts from the very beginning, so it starts from before primary school, and what we’ve done is tracked over time where those dropouts occur,” Kane shares.
“Primary school’s the phase where they’re starting to think about gender, in general, they’re looking at what’s a boy’s thing, what’s a girl’s thing, then they move into secondary school, which is where we’re targeting right now.
“That’s really, really critical, when they’re going, ‘OK, this what I can aspire to be, I can be a doctor, I can be this, I can be that’, and that’s when they once again, start self-selecting out, and they start seeing gender norms, they start not having opportunities, they start looking around them ... and they keep seeing things that they think they can’t do, and they self-select out.”
Kane says those lucky enough to even get to tertiary level in a tech field, once again, find most often universities are almost completely geared towards boys and men.
“And once again, dropout rates in university are really high,” she says.
“And then the career phases, if you get to that point, once again, there are dropout points, there’s bullying, there’s harassment, there’s poor work environments. And if they’re not getting to that point, if they’re not getting to the career, if they’re not getting to the senior place, we’re back to the beginning, but they’re not even seeing it from childhood.
“So that’s why it’s a really tough problem. It’s a societal problem.”
Kane says from the early days of Girl Geek Academy, there was a somewhat naive belief that they were going to change the world, and quickly.
“We were very optimistic. We were like, ‘we’re gonna fix this whole gender inequity thing, it will be over and done with in five years,” she laughs.
At the beginning they were very focused on women and running one-off events – hackathons, workshops etc – however the organisation acknowledges that without long-term, sustainable programs, change simply hasn’t happened – and won’t happen in the future.
“What we’ve pivoted to is actually figuring out how to work with the systems that are around us or working with government, working with big companies like Microsoft, like Apple, like Telstra, to get to the point that they’re the ones that can make the change,” Kane says.
“Now we understand we have to work with government, not against government … that’s where we have to make the change, it needs to come from the top.
“There can be a lot of organisations like ours running one-off events, which is good, but it’s not going to make change…
“…it actually needs to come from everyone together – men, women, government organisations, big companies – it needs to come from all of these different places.”
Girl Geek Academy is seeking expressions of interest from schools right around the country. For details click here.
