Every year the Workplace Gender Equality Agency reports on Gender Equality Indicators for private sector employers with 100 or more employees across 19 industries. This includes STEM-qualified industries.
Gender representation by industry
Use the interactive data below to compare the proportion of women and men in STEM industries, health industries and all industries, including the distribution of women and men in senior management positions.
The Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) introduced two new manager categories in 2021, so data from 2021 onwards is presented separately to 2016–2020 data. These two new manager categories were:
- head of business
- key management personnel.
How to use the interactive Power BI dashboard
The Power BI dashboards in the monitor present data in different formats, including charts, graphs and tables. You can customise these dashboards based on what you're interested in.
- Filter the data: Click the options on the left side of each dashboard and make your selections.
- Find more information about a specific data point: Hover your cursor over the dashboard to reveal more information, such as counts or percentages, if available.
- Reset the page to its original selections: Click the button labelled ‘Refresh to default view’ in the top left corner of the page.
- Move between different pages in a dashboard: Click the buttons under ‘Refresh to default view’, if available.
Data insights
In 2024, women made up 29% of workers in STEM industries. This was unchanged from 2023. The proportion of senior managers in STEM industries who were women was 27%, which was an increase from 25% in 2023.
Women made up 78% of workers in health industries and 51% of workers in all industries, which includes STEM, health and non-STEM industries. These results were the same as 2023.
Scientific research services was the STEM industry with the largest representation of women in 2024, making up 63% of workers. Women made up 44% of heads of business in the scientific research services industry, which was a decrease from 58% in 2023. Women in this industry make up 49% of senior managers, and 62% of other managers in 2024.
The highest proportion of women in senior STEM management positions was in key management personnel (27%), senior managers (27%), and other executives and general managers (27%) roles. There has been an increase in women in senior manager positions in all STEM industries, from 25% in 2023 to 27% in 2024, and in other executive and general manager positions, from 24% in 2023 to 27% in 2024.
The lowest proportion of women in senior STEM management positions were in CEO roles. Women made up 12% of CEOs across all STEM industries, an increase from 10% in 2023. This proportion was low compared to all health industries, where women made up 48% of CEOs, and all industries, where women made up 25% of CEOs.
Gender equity policies and strategies by industry
Use this interactive data to see the proportion of employers in STEM, non-STEM and health industries with gender equality strategies and policies.
Data insights
In 2024, 94% of employers in STEM industries had overall gender equality polices or strategies. This was higher than 87% in 2023 and 83% in 2019.
Employers in STEM industries that had a recruitment gender equality policy or strategy in 2024 was 94%, compared to 89% in 2019. Despite the proportion of employers in STEM industries with workplace retention gender equality policies increasing from 72% in 2019 to 78% in 2023, there was a decrease in 2024 to 73%.
The biggest increase over the last five years was in formal policies or strategies to support employees experiencing family and domestic violence. In 2024, 89% of employers in STEM industries had these policies compared to 64% in 2019.
The largest increase from 2023 to 2024 was in the proportion of employers in STEM industries with policies to support carers. In 2024, 86% of employers in STEM industries had policies in place to support carers, an increase from 77% in 2023.
About the data
Industries shown above align to Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification codes. In the STEM Equity Monitor, industries are defined as STEM industries when more than 50% of people in the industry reported a STEM qualification in the 2021 Census of Population and Housing.
This data is from private sector employers with 100 or more employees that reported to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA). The 2020–21 WGEA dataset was smaller because of the impacts of COVID-19, changes to the WGEA reporting platform, and changes to the way corporate groups reported using the new platform. Data is not available for some industries due to small sample sizes.
Discrepancies between WGEA Data Explorer and all industries data shown above are due to timing of output. All industries data in this article contains additional employers because it was compiled more recently than WGEA Data Explorer.
This page shows workforce data for industry (rather than occupation), by gender across years. For users who would prefer:
- numbers of women and men in detailed occupations across years, see Detailed STEM-qualified occupations by gender
- occupation data at a less detailed level but including diversity groups other than gender across years, see STEM-qualified occupations, by diversity group
- detailed occupation data for 2021 only, with intersecting diversity groups and state/territory splits, see Diversity in STEM insights from the 2021 Census.
See WGEA’s dataset.
Read more about our methodology and this data.