Published on the 20/08/2015 | Written by Beverley Head

Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner, Professor Gillian Triggs, has described as “horrifying” the fact that women aren’t more involved in technology related roles…

Speaking at a VCE event in Sydney this week Professor Triggs noted that only 16 percent of Australia’s IT undergraduates were female. She encouraged the industry to set a target to lift female participation. Triggs said that targets were “enormously effective” in raising participation rates and suggested that a target of achieving 30 percent female participation rates by 2020 would at least set a benchmark against which progress could be measured.

She referred to a recent New Statesman article which revealed that only one in ten Wikipedia editors was a woman. “If men are going to write history…it’s horrifying that women are not playing a role in that,” said Triggs.

She encouraged more women to “lean in” as Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg had suggested, taking on more senior roles and becoming mentors and role models for younger women. Although Australia produced the highest educated women in the world, she said that since 2006 the country had fallen from 15th position to 26th on the Global Gender Gap Index.

Having strong female role models was essential she said as; “There appears to be a strong connection between early attitudes and the propensity to pursue careers in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) fields.”

Australia’s chief scientist Ian Chubb has been on a long crusade to encourage the Government to boost STEM skills – but technology’s peak industry body, the Australian Information Industry Association, has raised its concerns about the focus of the Government’s Vision for a Science Nation consultation paper which resulted from Professor Chubb’s recommendations.

The report focuses too much on science and not enough on technology, engineering and maths according to the AIIA.

It warns that; “There’s a serious disconnect between the economy and the federal government’s strategy for supporting the skilled workers needed to fuel it,” noting that the paper contains no concrete plan of action.

The organisation goes onto question how committed the Government is to engineering any sort of reform noting that; “The paper’s lack of specifics and omission of recommended actions raises serious concerns regarding the extent to which the government is genuine in its commitment to STEM capacity building.”

This means progress in STEM education in Australia is often left to ad hoc initiatives such as Google’s recent $1 million cash grants commitment to three projects to encourage people – particularly indigenous students and girls – to consider careers in technology.