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John Cairns
In a paper published in The Lancet’s special issue on Advancing women in science, medicine, and global health, they looked at the efforts of the Australian Federal Government to support women’s advancement and leadership in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics through two complementary national programmes: the Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) programme and the Male Champions of Change (MCC) STEM.
SAGE is a partnership between the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering. The vision of SAGE is to improve gender equity in STEM in the Australian higher education and research sector by building a sustainable and adaptable Athena SWAN model for Australia. With the majority of Australia’s universities and a large proportion of medical and other publicly funded research institutes participating in SAGE, evidence of positive impact is already emerging. 15 Australian institutions have been recognised with the inaugural Athena SWAN Bronze Awards at the ceremony at Parliament House in Canberra on 5 December 2018.
The MCC STEM is a programme that brings together senior male leaders at the executive level from a diverse range of organisations to “listen, learn, and lead through action”, with a view to taking practical action to accelerate progress on gender equality. The Male Champions join the MCC STEM group as individuals rather than representatives of their organisation and make commitments to:
- changing workplace conditions, cultures and mindsets to enable both women and men to advance equally within our organisations;
- working to increase women on our boards, executive committee and in line management
- recruiting, developing and retaining diverse candidates as a priority;
- developing workplaces where health and safety are prioritized and all forms of violence in the workplace – including verbal, physical, sexual – and sexual harassment, are prohibited;
- sharing experiences and strategies for advancing gender equality across corporate, government and community sectors;
- being spokespersons for the promotion of gender equality, both individually and collectively;
- assessing and publicly reporting on our individual and collective progress and results on gender equality, consistent with local and global leading practice reporting frameworks.
MCC STEM provides space where the Male Champions can step up beside their female counterparts to help drive change, and use a variety of analytical tools to strengthen personal leadership on gender equality.
In 2018, the two Australian national programmes commenced a collaborative project to help accelerate change drawing upon the Leadership Shadow.
An evaluation of the project is currently underway and involves among others Dr Pavel Ovseiko, RDM Senior Research Fellow in Health Policy and Management and Dr Jane Latimer, Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney and NDORMS Visiting Professor of Musculoskeletal Science and Rehabilitation.
Should this initial collaborative project show benefit, it will be expanded further to include all SAGE senior leaders in Australia and recommendations on the adoption and effective use of the Leadership Shadow will be developed for STEM leaders globally.
Read the full paper at The Lancet.
Find out more about Science in Australia Gender Equity.
Find out more the Male Champions of Change STEM.