Department of Education university staff data shows teaching and research roles by gender and First Nations status.
Teaching and research workforce
Use this interactive data to see the composition of the teaching and research workforce, as reported by the Department of Education.
Source: Higher Education Staff statistical collection, Department of Education 2023 (unpublished)
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Data insights
Teaching and research workforce by gender
In 2023, Department of Education data showed that 31% of university staff in STEM teaching and research roles, by headcount, were women. This increased from 30% in 2022. The proportion of teaching and research roles held by women in STEM was lower than the proportion of women across all subjects together, including STEM, health and non-STEM, at 47%.
Men outnumbered women at all academic staffing levels for STEM teaching and research roles. In other fields, men only outnumbered women at the higher levels, rather than all levels, including:
- in non-STEM teaching and research roles, where men only outnumbered women at staffing levels D and E.
- in health roles, where men only outnumbered women at level E.
In 2023, the largest number of women in STEM teaching and research roles (around 600) were employed at academic staffing level B, which also accounted for the highest proportion of women in these roles (44%). While the proportion of women in the more senior levels D (29%) and E (20%) rose in 2023 in STEM fields, these positions maintained the smallest representation of women out of all levels.
In 2023, the largest number of men in STEM teaching and research roles (1,800) were employed at level E, almost 4 times the number of women. At level D, the number of men was 2.5 times the number of women. Levels D and E are the most senior levels, which shows women are most underrepresented in STEM at leadership levels.
In engineering and related technologies, only 13% of the most senior positions (level E) were held by women in 2023. No STEM field had women holding more than 27% of the highest academic positions.
In comparison, 62% of the research and teaching workforce in health fields were women. Health fields also had a higher proportion of women (45%) in the most senior positions. In non-STEM fields, 51% of the workforce and 40% of the most senior positions were women.
Teaching and research workforce by First Nations status
The proportion of First Nations university staff working in STEM teaching and research roles was only 0.4% in 2023. This was lower than in both health (1.3%) and non-STEM (1.9%) roles. First Nations people account for 3.2% of the Australian population, according to the 2021 Census.
In total, there were over 30 First Nations university staff in STEM teaching and research roles in 2023. This number increased from fewer than 20 First Nations university staff in STEM teaching and research roles in 2021.
In STEM, First Nations staff accounted for 2.7% of level A staff in 2023. In comparison, First Nations staff accounted for 5.2% of level A staff in health roles and 6.0% of level A staff in non-STEM roles.
The proportion of women in each field of teaching and research was higher among First Nations people than non-First Nations people. For example:
- 50% of First Nations people in STEM teaching and research roles in 2023 were women while 30% of non-First Nations people were women
- 76% of First Nations people in health teaching and research roles in 2023 were women while 62% of non-First Nations people were women
- 64% of First Nations people in non-STEM teaching and research roles in 2023 were women while 51% of non-First Nations people were women.
About the data
The university research workforce encompasses people who work in higher education settings. Data on this page is sourced from the Higher Education staff data collection, which is made up of annual submissions from universities to the Department of Education.
Staff are classified from academic level A (most junior) to academic level E (most senior). These are standardised employment levels across all Australian universities. Position titles aligned to academic levels may vary between institutions. Because of this, our data does not include position titles when presenting academic levels.
Department of Education data on this page includes full-time and part-time staff in teaching and research functions and staff levels A to E only. Full time equivalent data also includes estimated casual staff.
Data shows headcount and full-time equivalent by gender, for fields of education at the 2-digit level under the Australian Standard Classification of Education (ASCED). Research-only staff are not captured because they’re not assigned to any field of education. This means the total workforce is larger than presented.
Staff numbers below 10 are not shown in charts. As a result of suppressing these small cells, the sum of staff numbers in charts may be lower than totals shown below charts.
The field of education assigned to a staff member is only an estimate. Staff are assigned to a Field of Education based on the reported organisation unit code. Using attributes of the organisation unit code observed in the student data, these are assigned to an Academic Organisational Unit which is then mapped to Field of Education.
The latest year’s staff data is an estimate based on the previous year’s staff data. This will result in changes to staff counts between iterations of the STEM Equity Monitor as estimated data is adjusted to actual data. This is also the case for full time equivalent data, where estimated casual data is retrospectively updated with actual casual data each year.
Read more about our methodology and this data.