Different coloured shapes stacked next to and top of each other

Your views will help shape a vision for increased diversity in STEM, allowing all Australians to belong in and benefit from STEM.

Help shape the Australian Government’s vision to increase diversity in STEM:

  • skills
  • workforces
  • leadership.

We are starting a conversation about barriers to STEM participation, and how we can break them down. Barriers can include assumptions and biases. We want to learn about your experiences with such barriers.

We welcome stories and insights from all Australians and organisations who have a connection to STEM.

To help us understand how we can support pathways for diverse groups into STEM, we especially encourage experiences and insights from:

  • First Nations people
  • Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) people
  • women and girls
  • people living in regional and remote areas
  • people with disability
  • people from low socio-economic backgrounds
  • neurodiverse people
  • LGBTQIA+ people
  • people who face age-based discrimination.

This is the first step in our engagement. We will also engage with you to explore pathways, solutions and opportunities to increase diversity. Please keep an eye out for these next steps.

Dr Parwinder Kaur, Associate Professor and Director DNA Zoo Australia, University of Western Australia

Science, technology, engineering and mathematics, a.k.a STEM, is everywhere.

It is all around us in everyday life.

Mikaela Jade, CEO and Founder at Indigital

Personally, I like to add an extra S to the STEM acronym to reflect storytelling, so it becomes STEMS, and storytelling is really about the stories that we tell to share inter-generational knowledge about science, technology, engineering and maths.

Duncan McIntyre, Deputy Secretary, Science and Technology Group, Department of Industry, Science and Resources

STEM in many ways is about creativity.

It's about combining things that haven't been combined before to find new ways to do things that make our society better.

And it's only through diversity that you have new things to combine to create knowledge that will take us forward.

Sally-Ann William, CEO at Cicada Innovations

It's for the youngest participants in our society to the oldest. It's something that we do and interact with every day.

But it's also something that we need to enable opportunities for people to create with and create solutions for every challenge that we face in society.

Parwinder

Diversity and inclusion is no brainer.

We all know that diversity fosters innovation and creativity. It actually provides people a chance to unite in their differences.

Sally-Ann

I became involved in this process because I fundamentally believe we need to do better and we need to create better pathways and greater pathways for everybody to be engaged.

Duncan

Your ideas could be the ones that make the big difference and we'll only know if you give them to us.

Mikaela

Didjurigura.

Thank you for being a part of this STEM review.

Final panel

Shows the Australian Government crest; the title ‘Diversity in STEM Review 2023’; abstract artwork for the review; and the link: consult.industry.gov.au/diversityinstem1

Have your say

Read the dialogue starter and have your say on our consultation hub. We encourage submissions by 11 April 2023. There will be more opportunities to add to the conversation.

More information

The minister announced this phase of engagement on 3 March 2023 and encourages you to take part
We announced the diversity in STEM review on 24 November 2022
Learn more about the diversity in STEM review