Contract ‘carrots’: Proposal to link lucrative government deals to gender diversity in STEM

Technology businesses applying for lucrative Australian government contracts should be required to have a gender diversity action plan before securing that funding, says Girl Geek Academy CEO Sarah Moran.

Ways to increase the participation of women, girls, and other underrepresented groups in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields are currently under consideration by the Diversity in STEM Review, a major government initiative led by the Department of Industry, Science, and Resources.

The long-running review published a list of draft recommendations in August, proposing more than a dozen ways to expand access to STEM education and industry access for underrepresented groups.

Key recommendations include a call for government funding bodies to formally commit to diversity in STEM programs and initiatives.

“Government grant funding, investment and procurement for STEM-related programs should align with best practice guidelines for inclusion and diversity,” the draft recommendations added.

On the industry side, “all STEM-employing organisations should develop a recruitment and promotion system for STEM positions that attracts, retains and promotes employees from underrepresented, including intersectional, cohorts,” the recommendations state.

Moran’s Girl Geek Academy is a social enterprise focused on building gender equity in the technology sector.

Commenting on the draft recommendations, Moran said baking gender equity into the procurement process, above and beyond the review’s existing proposals, would help bridge the gap.

“We need to fix the system, not the girls: it’s a billion-dollar system and the government has both the power and money to change it,” Moran said in a statement.

“We’re calling on the Federal Government to ensure tech companies present gender equality action plans before they get access to the government the chequebook: if you want to receive public funds, you need to do the work to support women in the tech industry.”

Contracts handed out by the Australian Government were valued at $80.8 billion in 2021-2022, with STEM-related fields comprising many billions of dollars of the overall share.

Those “contract ‘carrots'” could be used incentivise private sector firms to boost the diversity of their workforce, Moran added.

“Leveraging procurement in this way would not only create the financial incentive for industry to get involved but also create the infrastructure for industry to easily participate in these programs. It’s a clear win, win.”

Submissions commenting on those draft recommendations closed Friday, ahead of the final report’s publication in October.