Australia’s 2023–24 Youth in STEM survey by YouthInsight explored young people’s awareness and perceptions of STEM subjects and careers.
The analysis below summarises findings from gender diverse young people in YouthInsight’s report.
Gender diverse analysis – Interest, confidence and career aspirations in STEM
Compare interest, confidence, barriers and career aspirations of gender diverse young people from the 2023–24 survey. Comparisons are made with all other respondents.
Source: YouthInsight 2023-24
Data insights
The Youth in STEM research program includes responses from trans and gender diverse young people. While this cohort is too small for reporting across all outputs, this article includes several notable items.
The research found that understanding, interest and perceived importance of gender diverse young people are in line with all other respondents, if not higher. However, levels of confidence, current participation and intention to study STEM are lower than levels seen among all other respondents.
This indicates gender diverse people may need more support in the areas of STEM. Gender diverse people are also more likely to step away from STEM to pursue creative interests and careers. Because of this, more could be done to educate young people, specifically gender diverse young people, about how some STEM careers can involve creativity.
Interest in STEM
87% of gender diverse young people expressed interest in STEM subjects, the same proportion as all other respondents.
There were no statistically significant differences in interest across STEM subjects.
However, gender diverse young people reported a higher interest in Science (68%) than all other respondents (63%). For other STEM subjects, interest was higher among all other respondents.
Confidence in studying STEM
Gender diverse young people showed slightly lower confidence than all other respondents across all STEM subjects. There was a significant difference for Technology skills, with 52% of gender diverse people saying they express confidence in studying Technology compared to 62% of all other respondents.
The proportion of gender diverse people who were confident in their ability to achieve good results was highest for Mathematics, followed by Science, Technology and Engineering. For all other respondents, the proportion expressing confidence in Science and Technology was equal highest, followed by Mathematics and then Engineering.
Perceived importance of STEM skills
There are high levels of agreement that STEM knowledge and skills are important for getting a good job in future. 90% of gender diverse young people agreed with this, compared to 92% of all other respondents.
A slightly higher proportion of gender diverse young people agreed skills in Mathematics are important (78%) compared to all other respondents (74%). The differences between gender diverse people and all other respondents across STEM subjects was not significant.
Intention to study and work in STEM
While there were no significant differences between cohorts, there were some mixed results in the future aspirations in STEM.
A slightly lower proportion of gender diverse young people intend to study a STEM subject in the future (17%), compared to all other respondents (23%). However, a slightly higher proportion of gender diverse young people would like to have a STEM job in future (35%) compared to all other respondents (33%).
When asked why they do not intend to study STEM in the future, 59% of gender diverse young people said they prefer creative subjects, compared to only 19% of all other respondents.
STEM jobs that are more popular among gender diverse people are Scientist and Data analyst.. Computing or information technology (IT) and Engineer are slightly more popular among all other respondents.
Looking at non-STEM career intentions, gender diverse young people were significantly more likely than all other respondents to want to be an artist (27% compared to 6%) or social worker (13% compared to 5%). They were significantly less likely to want to work in finance or banking (0% compared to 7% of all other respondents).
About the data
The 2023–24 Youth in STEM research was a survey of 2,948 young people aged between 12 and 25 years. It was the fourth survey in the program, it followed Youth in STEM surveys in 2018–19, 2019–20, and 2021–22.
Gender diverse young people are those who responsed “Non-binary” or “I identify my gender as: (please specify)” for the gender question in the 2023–24 Youth in STEM survey. Comparisons above are with all other respondents. This cohort includes people who identified as boy/man, girl/woman, or did not provide their gender.
The survey asked questions to understand young peoples’ awareness and perception of STEM subjects and careers. Respondents came from all states and territories across Australia.
See further insights into this data in Youth perceptions and attitudes to STEM.
Our department commissioned YouthInsight to carry out this survey. In 2022–23, they surveyed parents, teachers and career advisers to complement the youth survey.
Refer to the 2023-24 Youth in STEM survey report for more detailed information and project methodology.
Read the previous Youth in STEM survey report for 2021-22
Read about our methodology.