Women In STEMM - Then and Now

Women In STEMM - Then and Now

AUDIO: Ambient Music

VISUAL: RMIT Logo appear and then reveals shots of the two stars of the video. Casey, a high school student who is interested in Science and Technology is introduced. Next, Gail, a Physics lecturer at RMIT is introduced. The two sit down for an in conversation style video in a studio, which cuts back and forth between the two with no other visuals. 

AUDIO: 

CAMERA CREW SPEAKS:        All right, and rolling.

CASEY SPEAKS:  What STEMM-related opportunities were available to you when you were my age?

GAIL SPEAKS: There was never anybody who said, "Oh, you can't do physics. You're are a girl." I noticed that there was something not quite as I expected when I took the subjects between 16 and 18 because my class was full of boys, and there were two girl.

CASEY SPEAKS:   Oh, really?

Gail: That was the first time that I noticed, oh, it's not even numbers as it had been prior to that. With jobs, if I wanted to go any higher, I soon realised that there were not many women in those roles, so there were probably lots of messages to my unconscious mind at that time that I could do it, but only to a certain level.

CASEY SPEAKS: Looking at your experience and industry, what changes have you seen, if any?

GAIL SPEAKS:   There's more women.

CASEY SPEAKS: Yeah.

GAIL SPEAKS:  There's more women that I'm shoulder to shoulder with. There are more women in management positions, so I can look up and see, "Ah, I can get there." In a lot of the outreach that I've done, I've spoken with school-age children and, particularly, girls, and some have said that they've been under a lot of pressure from their female friends not to study STEMM subjects because they're not cool or it's not what-

CASEY SPEAKS:  Oh, really?

GAIL SPEAKS:  It's not what girls do. Have you experienced any of that at school or with your friends?

CASEY SPEAKS:  I do have a good group of friends, and I feel a lot of them, too, are interested in the sciences, but ...

GAIL SPEAKS:  Great.

CASEY SPEAKS:  ... a fair ... a lot of them also have other interests, too, but it doesn't really matter because everything is ... whatever you want to do. I guess something else I'd love to ask is what are you excited about for the future?

GAIL SPEAKS:  Last year, I was appointed in the department of physics, and I was the first woman, the first academic female in 2017, and these things, these statistics still exists in many places around the world. There are still conferences with all-male speaker lineups. These are the things I want to change, and the more women I have coming up through the ranks, the more choice I'll have.

What advice do you have for me when I'm talking to 16-year-old girls about encouraging them to go into STEMM subjects?

CASEY SPEAKS:  Sharing your experiences, especially how you began. That's always ...

GAIL SPEAKS: Okay.

CASEY SPEAKS:  That's something that I always found very valuable especially when I was in America and I heard all these amazing people talking. They talked about their life journeys from like the very beginning. They basically talked about those deciding moments ...

GAIL SPEAKS: Okay.

CASEY SPEAKS:  ... that really kicked them off into whatever path they went into and just how they ... yeah, the opportunities and how they really grabbed a hold of those opportunities, and I think touching on the mentoring part, I think that is something. It's a very generous act and it's very, very helpful to young girls.

GAIL SPEAKS: Is it your plan to go to university?

CASEY SPEAKS: I think I will be a lifelong learner, so university definitely seems like the place to go, and I guess we'll see where it goes from there.

GAIL SPEAKS:   Are you thinking of taking a STEMM subject?

CASEY SPEAKS:  Definitely. I think STEMM is where you get the answers and where you find more questions, and it's just ... I think it's a very fulfilling place to be, so I would like to have a career in that.

GAIL SPEAKS: Great. You're really great to have you on board.

CASEY SPEAKS: Thank you.

AUDIO: Ambient music fades

VISUAL: RMIT logo appears

End transcript