With Australia about to mark International Women in Engineering Day on 23 June, it's an opportune time to discuss the ongoing issue of gender imbalance in technology and engineering, and how we should address the problem in a meaningful and sustainable way.
While gender-based employment quotas are often proposed as a solution to this imbalance, the answer lies much earlier: having more girls and women choosing to study technology and engineering.
The pipeline problem originates at school level, and it's been there for a long time.
When I was at school, a future career in technology never entered my head. Given IT was not that popular overall back then, that might have been understandable.
When my daughters were going through school things were very different, but for one of my girls who was interested in tech, she was the only one in her class.
Today only 25% of Australian year 12 girls study information technology, physics and engineering subjects. That feeds directly into university, with just 20% going on to enrol in engineering or technology degrees, lagging well behind other developed nations.
That means the talent pool for female candidates just isn't big enough. We experienced this last year when we were recruiting for our first cohort of graduates for mainframe training at our NextGen Academy in Perth.
And we are not an isolated case; that low proportion of female engineering and technology graduates translates directly into the broader workforce. In Highly Technical Occupations: The Leaky Pipeline, a 2025 report led by the Tech Council of Australia in partnership with Commonwealth Bank of Australia, researchers found that women make up just 20% of the highly technical employees in Australia (which has grown only 2% over five years), dropping to 16% after age 40.
Impact of female underrepresentation
You might ask, why is it important to fix this imbalance in the first place?
When women are underrepresented in technology and engineering, the effects are practical and national: fewer skills, less diversity of perspective and leadership representation, and lost economic opportunity.
A 2025 report by RMIT Online and Deloitte Access Economics found that increasing women's participation in technology careers could represent a $6.5 billion opportunity for Australian businesses. At the same time, women transitioning into tech can also benefit significantly, estimating they can earn $31,100 or 31% more on average annually, representing a $4.3 billion positive wage impact overall.
For me, my start in technology was almost accidental. On a gap year before planning to start a law degree, I was part of an intake for clerical staff at an insurance company.
In the initial aptitude testing, I was identified by the company's CTO as an ideal candidate to join the in-house mainframe academy. I was coding in Assembler by the end of it and I never looked back!
A collaborative effort needed
Despite an active career program at my school, my potential wasn't identified until after I'd left, and that's still one of the problems we have to solve today.
We have to focus on school-stage intervention, especially before year 11 and 12 subject selections. Girls need more exposure to engineering and technology careers, relatable role models, and a clear understanding of the breadth of these professions, and the opportunities that are available to them.
There have been numerous programs attempted in the past. While I was at IBM, I was involved with EX.I.T.E. (EXploring Interests in Technology and Engineering), a three-day bootcamp experience for girls from years 8-10, but there was no follow-up or next stage to the program, and I often wonder what happened to that cohort of students.
I know that there are many other programs around now that are doing a great job tackling early school intervention – but in isolation they aren't shifting the needle enough.
RMIT Online's CEO Nic Cola identified an "urgent need for greater collaboration between industry, educational institutions and government to accelerate upskilling efforts to attract women into tech."
As International Women in Engineering Day approaches, the question is not whether Australia can afford to invest in stronger female participation in technology and engineering. It is whether we can afford not to.
We need to combine our efforts – industry, academia and government working collaboratively – to close the gap. The challenge is too large, and the opportunity too significant, for us to tackle in isolation.