Department of Education university staff data shows teaching and research roles by gender and First Nations status.
Teaching and research workforce
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You can 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Source: Higher Education Staff statistical collection, Department of Education 2026 (unpublished)
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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.
First Nations identification is not fully reported in the data as many records are missing this information. Figures for First Nations staff should be treated with caution, as they may underestimate actual numbers.
Staff on this page 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 staff at levels A to E only. It is made up of full-time and part-time staff in functions ‘teaching only’ and ‘teaching and research’.
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). Staff in function ‘research only’ are not captured because they are not assigned to any field of education. This means the total workforce is larger than presented.
Staff numbers below 5 are not shown in 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. Casual staff are excluded in the latest year’s full-time equivalent (FTE) staff data. The FTE time series should be used with caution considering 2024 data does not include any casual staff.
Read more about our methodology and this data.
Data insights
Teaching and research workforce by gender
In 2024, Department of Education data showed that 34% of university staff in STEM teaching and research roles, by headcount, were women. This increased from 33% in 2023. 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 51%.
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, including in:
- non-STEM teaching and research roles, where men only outnumbered women at staffing levels D and E
- health roles, where men only outnumbered women at level E.
In 2024, the largest number of women in STEM teaching and research roles (around 900) were employed at academic staffing level B, which also accounted for the highest proportion of women in these roles (45%). The proportion of women in levels D (30%) and E (22%) in STEM fields had the lowest representation of women out of all levels.
In 2024, the largest number of men in STEM teaching and research roles (around 2,000) were employed at level E, 3.5 times the number of women. At level D, the number of men was 2.4 times the number of women. This shows women are most underrepresented in STEM at leadership levels.
In engineering and related technologies, only 14% of at level E positions were held by women in 2024. No STEM field had women holding more than 33% of the highest academic positions.
In comparison, 66% of the research and teaching workforce in health fields were women. Health fields also had a higher proportion of women (46%) in the most senior positions. In non-STEM fields, 53% 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 0.5% in 2024. This was lower than in both non-STEM (2.5%) and health (2.6%) roles. First Nations people account for 3.2% of the Australian population, according to the 2021 Census.
In total, there were around 30 First Nations university staff in STEM teaching and research roles in 2024, an increase from around 20 in 2022.
In STEM, First Nations staff accounted for 1.3% of level A staff in 2024. In comparison, First Nations staff accounted for 5.0% of level A staff in non-STEM roles and 6.1% of level A staff in health 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:
- 48% of First Nations people in STEM teaching and research roles in 2024 were women while 33% of non-First Nations people were women
- 79% of First Nations people in health teaching and research roles in 2024 were women while 66% of non-First Nations people were women
- 62% of First Nations people in non-STEM teaching and research roles in 2024 were women while 53% of non-First Nations people were women.