Women are still a minority in STEM fields, and face particular challenges to entering and remaining in STEM careers.
While things are improving, the STEM Equity Monitor reports that just under 24% of people employed in ICT roles in 2020 were women. The Second National Data Report on Girls and Women in STEM states:
- Women made up less than a quarter of students studying STEM in 2019 (22% of enrolments and 24% of completions of total STEM VET and university enrolments)
- Five years after graduating, men with a STEM qualification were 1.8 times more likely to be working in a STEM-qualified occupation compared to their women peers
- Fathers are more than twice as likely to have a STEM qualification as mothers (47% of fathers, 20% of mothers).
When you’re just starting out, it’s important to be able to find your crew.
It’s hard enough to make friends at uni, let alone when you’re the only woman in the room in some of your seminars. This challenge has been magnified during the pandemic with less opportunity to meet people on campus – a struggle very familiar to Cloud students too.
For these reasons, Deakin Girl Geeks was created specifically to support women and non-binary students to find like-minded people, be engaged in the university community, and get the most out of their time at Deakin.
Fortunately for all tech geeks, we aren’t the only IT-related club at Deakin – there’s also the Deakin Software Engineering Club and Deakin University Computer Society.