About the monitor
We released the first edition of the STEM Equity Monitor (the monitor) on International Women’s Day, 8 March 2020. This is the sixth edition, and we will update it annually until 2029.
The monitor gives national data on women and other diverse groups in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
Following the Diversity in STEM Review, the monitor has expanded to include a wider range of groups, where possible. These groups include:
- women and gender diverse people
- First Nations people
- culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) people
- people with disability
- people from regional and remote locations
- people in low socioeconomic areas.
The monitor collects and standardises data from a range of sources into a single publication. It follows the participation pathway in STEM through:
- primary and secondary school
- higher education
- graduation outcomes
- the workforce.
Each data page gives interactive data visualisations and high-level observations from the data. Users can filter or reconfigure the interactive data to make their own observations. As the relevant issues are different for each stage of the pathway, data in each section is not comparable to other sections.
The monitor aims to help policymakers and the STEM sector understand where progress is being made and where inequities persist.
Unless specifically indicated, significance testing has not been carried out on data in the monitor.
Acknowledgements
Our department thanks the following organisations that contributed data to the STEM Equity Monitor:
- Australian Antarctic Division (AAD)
- Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)
- Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA)
- Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR)
- Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS)
- Australia’s Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO)
- Australian Public Service Commission (APSC)
- Australian Research Council (ARC)
- Bureau of Meteorology (BoM)
- Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
- Department of Education
- Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG)
- Geoscience Australia (GA)
- National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER)
- Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
- National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC)
- Social Research Centre
- YouthInsight (the research arm of Student Edge)
- Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA)
We also thank the Office of the Chief Scientist and all those who have contributed support and advice through the development of the monitor.
Data labelling for gender, women and men
The Australian Government recognises that some people identify as and are recognised in the community as either or both:
- a gender other than the biological sex they were assigned at birth or during infancy
- a gender which is neither, or not exclusively, woman or man.
That’s why we use the terms ‘gender’, ‘women’ and ‘men’ to identify the data in the monitor. These terms (and ‘girls’ and ‘boys’ for minors) encompass everyone who identifies as women/girls or men/boys, whether they be:
- cisgender (someone whose gender identity corresponds with the sex assigned at birth)
- transgender
- non-binary
- intersex.
Some data may have been collected and recorded by sex. However, recognising the government’s preferred approach to collect information by gender wherever possible (and for consistency) the terms ‘gender’, ‘women’ and ‘men’ will be used throughout.
Some data sources include information for people who don’t identify as a woman/girl or man/boy. This information is not shown in visualisations, except for perceptions and attitudes to STEM among gender diverse youth. There are also some pages where data for non-binary and gender diverse people can be shown in commentary. This is stated on relevant pages.
View the Australian Government Guidelines on the Recognition of Sex and Gender.
Data labelling for other diversity groups
The expanded monitor features data for diversity groups other than gender, where possible. Definitions for these may differ across topics/pages, as they are adapted from each data source. More information is provided in footnotes and the ‘About the data’ section of each monitor page.
STEM definitions
The monitor considers STEM to include the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. This is consistent with the approach in Australia’s STEM Workforce report (Office of the Chief Scientist 2020). The monitor uses this definition of STEM education fields, which is sourced from the Australian Standard Classification of Education (ASCED). It then matches these to research fields from the Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC).
The monitor also uses qualifications in STEM education fields to define STEM-qualified occupations and STEM-qualified industries. The monitor considers an occupation or industry to be STEM-qualified if the majority of workers in the occupation or industry reported a qualification in a STEM field of education in the 2021 Census of Population and Housing. However, the monitor also recognises that STEM-qualified graduates work in wide range of sectors across the workforce.
Previous editions of the monitor were based on education and occupation data from the 2016 Census of Population and Housing. Changes to definitions of STEM- and Health-qualified occupations and industries are described below. Definitions based on the 2021 Census of Population and Housing have been applied over entire time series throughout the monitor (unless otherwise specified) to ensure data can be tracked over time on a consistent basis.
This monitor does not include health in the definition of STEM. However, health is recognised as a closely related field that people with STEM qualifications may enter. It is often included in broader definitions of STEM. The monitor allows users to view health data as well as STEM, so they can see the results for STEMM – science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine.