In September, Science Minister Ed Husic ordered a review of government-funded programs designed to increase participation of women in STEM.
Over the past decade, more than $100 million had been spent on a raft of programs, Mr Husic said, few of which had been assessed for effectiveness, and with little shift in the data around women’s participation.
“It’s vital that Australians from all parts of the community have a chance to contribute to our ambitious scientific and technological agenda,” he said.
“STEM communities that are diverse, inclusive and collaborative are crucial to meeting the challenges of the future and maximising the nation’s potential. It also makes good business sense; studies have found firms with diverse workforces perform better.”
Those who work in STEM are overwhelmingly male. Women make up only 16 per cent of people with STEM qualifications and Indigenous people account for only 6 per cent.
Ms Williams, who held her first panel meeting in Canberra on Wednesday, is joined by Parwinder Kaur, a biotechnologist from the University of Western Australia, Mikaela Jade, founder of ed-tech company Indigital, and Narelle Luchetti from the Department of Industry.
Ms Williams said her own career into the tech world was anything but typical. A public school-educated daughter of parents who both left school before the age of 14 and who ran a greengrocers shop in Mudgeeraba on the Gold Coast, Ms Williams says her accidental journey into tech was a result of hard work, teachers who believed in her and serendipity.
She is chief executive of Cicada Innovations, an incubator for deep tech start-ups in Sydney. She had previously spent 12 years in R&D at Google.
“I got there by accident and hard work – not by design,” she said. “My real objective in participating in this work is how do you make it easier for the next kid who is growing up and doesn’t have a visible pathway into a career at Google, or a university career or running a deep-tech incubator.”
The winners of this year’s Prime Minister’s Prize for Innovation, Alison Todd and Elisa Mokany from SpeeDx, were inspirational proof that STEM careers could come from adversity, Ms Williams said,
The two women started their company after being made redundant, found financial backing “and worked their butts off”.
“There wasn’t one valley of death, they have gone through multiple valleys of death, but they now employ well over 100 people in Australia and their molecular diagnostic kits for cancer and infectious pathogens are sold around the world,” she said.
