If we are serious about productivity, innovation and long-term economic resilience, we cannot afford to keep losing women from STEM occupations and leadership pipelines. We cannot afford to overlook experience. And we cannot afford decision-making structures that draw from only part of the population.
Australia doesn’t have a pipeline problem when it comes to girls in STEM. It has a retention problem for women.
At school, the story is encouraging. Girls are engaged, capable and increasingly well represented in science subjects. But by the time careers take shape, that momentum has collapsed.
According to the Federal Government’s STEM Equity Monitor, women make up just 27 per cent of Australia’s STEM workforce. Among those with STEM qualifications, only 15 per cent are working in STEM roles. At the most senior levels, the gap widens further, with women holding just 12 per cent of CEO roles across STEM industries.
This is not a question of capability. It is a system that steadily filters women out.
We invest heavily in educating women – through schools, universities and publicly funded research institutions – only to lose them at the point where their experience becomes most valuable. It is not just inequitable. It is economically irrational.
The reasons are not new, but they remain unresolved. Women in STEM face persistent pay gaps, limited career progression and workplace cultures that make long-term participation difficult. Structural barriers – including lack of flexibility, poor support during caregiving years, and limited access to mentors – compound over time. These are not isolated issues. They are patterns that push women out. The result is a slow but consistent attrition of talent.
This becomes even more pronounced in startups and investment – the very sectors that shape the future economy. The State of Australian Startup Funding report showed that all-female founding teams receive just 2 per cent of funding (down from 4 per cent in 2024), while most deals go to all-male teams. Founding teams, investors and boards remain overwhelmingly male. And when those making funding decisions lack diversity, so too do the ideas that receive backing.
As McKinsey & Company’s “Diversity Matters Even More” research shows, diversity is not simply a representation issue – it is associated with stronger decision-making, better risk management and improved financial performance. This is where the conversation often stops – at representation. But the deeper issue is decision-making power.
If women are not present in leadership, investment and governance roles, they are not shaping strategy. They are not determining where capital flows. And they are not influencing which problems are prioritised. That has real-world consequences.
We already see it in product design, healthcare and research. For decades, clinical trials were largely conducted on men, leading to gaps in understanding how treatments affect women. Even everyday technologies – from medical devices to consumer products – have historically been designed around a narrow user base. This is what happens when systems are built without diverse perspectives.
There is also a more subtle, but equally significant, economic blind spot: how we undervalue experience. Australia positions itself as a knowledge economy, yet we are not structured to retain and use knowledge effectively over time. Women are more likely to step out of the workforce due to caregiving responsibilities. When they return, they often face reduced opportunities, despite being more experienced and more capable than ever. Too often, that return comes via roles below their previous level or outside their core expertise, despite years of accumulated capability.
In a knowledge economy, some of the most valuable capabilities – judgment, pattern recognition and strategic thinking – are built over time, not early in a career. Yet this is precisely when many women are sidelined.
We are, in effect, investing in people for decades and then failing to use their highest-value skills – a productivity issue as much as a workforce one.
National conversations about innovation often focus on research output, commercialisation and global competitiveness. Reports on Australia’s innovation performance consistently point to a problem: strong research and ideas are not being translated into scalable outcomes.
One of the most immediate opportunities is already in front of us. We do not necessarily need more talent. We need to better use the talent we already have. It means designing career pathways that account for real lives – including caregiving – rather than penalising them. It means addressing pay gaps transparently and ensuring women are represented in leadership, investment and board roles where decisions are made.
And it means recognising that diversity is not a ‘nice to have’ in innovation systems. It is fundamental to how effective those systems are.
Investing in human capability is not a wellbeing add-on. It is economic policy, workforce policy and health policy simultaneously. That applies across the lifespan – from education through to mid-career and leadership – yet this is exactly where Australia is losing women. Countries such as Sweden and Norway have treated this as economic strategy, investing in shared parental leave, accessible childcare and structured return-to-work pathways to retain skilled talent over time.
Evidence from McKinsey & Company and broader European post-crisis analyses suggests companies with more diverse leadership were more resilient and better positioned to navigate economic shocks – reinforcing the point that diversity is not just equitable, but economically advantageous.
Australia isn’t short on talent. It is just not using enough of it.
Gillian Woodhouse
Gillian Woodhouse is a health and life sciences commercialisation expert specialising in the translation of research into investable and scalable innovation. She works with scientists, founders, investors and senior leaders across the health and biotech sectors to bridge the gap between discovery, strategy and capital. With a background spanning biotechnology, medical research and innovation governance, she focuses on strengthening the systems that shape health innovation and delivery.