Women make up less than one-fifth of Australians qualified in science, technology, engineering and maths and continue to be paid less than their male colleagues.
It is a finding of a new report by the Office of the Chief Scientist, which shows 16% of the 2.3 million Stem-qualified Australians are female, with engineering showing the largest gender gap.
When it comes to pay, 32% of men hit the highest income bracket ($104,000), compared with 12% of women in the latest census.
The chief scientist, Alan Finkel, said that could not be explained by women having children or working part-time.
“The pay gap between men and women revealed in this report is significant, it is long-standing and it is unacceptable,” he said. “No clever country underserves half its people.”
The report, released on Thursday, found just 7% of engineers were women. However, there were almost the same number of male and female scientists.
Based on the most recent figures from the 2011 census, the report also found two-thirds of the Stem workforce earned qualifications through vocational education, with one-third university qualified.
It shows Stem-qualified Australians work across a diverse range of industries.
“We have people with physics doctorates working as financial analysts,” Finkel said. “We have chemistry graduates running farms and making wines. There are no limits on what a Stem graduate can do, and we shouldn’t impose them.”
The federal government has earmarked almost $20m to encourage primary and high school students to focus on Stem subjects.
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