On 29 August, the UTS Faculty of Engineering and IT (FEIT) announced that it would change the ATAR criteria for women wanting to study engineering at UTS. Reviews were oddly mixed. The word ‘merit’ was thrown around like a javelin and a range of people offered their views about the decision.
Yet only a few days later the SMH reported that the number of women running top ASX-listed companies has gone backwards as all but two of the 25 newly minted chief executive positions went to men in the past year (‘The Ugly Statistical Truth’, SMH, 10 September).
The Chief Executive Women (CEW) ASX200 Senior Executive Census 2019 published the same week showed that just 12 of Australia's top listed companies currently have a woman chief executive, a drop from 14 last year.
According to the latest statistics from the Australian Institute of Company Directors, women still make up less than a third (29.7%) of ASX 200 board directors – a figure that has stalled. And the national gender pay gap remains stubbornly persistent, having hovered between 14% and 19% for the past two decades.
For women of colour the situation is even more stark. Of the 12 women CEOs in the ASX200, only two are from culturally diverse backgrounds – American born Jayne Hrdlicka, CEO of The A2 Milk Company who has a Czech background and UK born Shemara Wikramanayake, CEO of Macquarie Group Ltd who is from a Sri Lankan background.
Given this environment, UTS FEIT should be congratulated for its ATAR adjustment points gender initiative. This important move responds directly to calls from industry for more female graduates from the engineering and IT disciplines. These companies have realised that diversity in their staffing is positive for their businesses, and they have been frustrated, as have universities, that the percentages of women entering and being retained in these industries sits stubbornly between 13% (engineering) and 28% (IT).
On July 25 the UTS Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion and UniBank held a sector symposium on implementing gender targets in STEMM. The report from the symposium, released this month as part of our Athena SWAN initiative, highlights research evidence that increasing the proportion of women in positions of authority is a positive for both women and for men in the workplace, and ultimately for the competitiveness of organisations and the wider industries of which they are a part.
The report also emphasises that ATAR adjustment is just a small part of improving women’s representation in STEMM fields, with school outreach, mentoring and carefully designed training and support programs, also critical.
Universities exist for public benefit, and there is no doubt that attracting more women into engineering and IT will produce significant public and social benefits, beyond the benefit to individual female students. I am proud that UTS recognises the many systemic issues that affect student subject choice and achievement in secondary schooling, particularly for girls who want to study stereotypical ‘male’ subjects. All of these choices can have an impact on ATAR.
What we know at UTS however, is that once students from under-represented groups are ‘in the door’ their success rates match those of the general undergraduate population. By creating pathways for more female students to study engineering and IT, UTS FEIT is helping to change the engineering and IT industries of the future. This is change that the industry and broader society want to see.