Today, 11 February 2025, marks the 10th anniversary of the United Nations’ International Day of Women and Girls in Science, an occasion to promote female role models in science fields and support the creation of an inclusive environment for young women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to look forward to.
Gender inequality has persisted at all levels of science based education and in careers around the world throughout the years. Although progress has been made, women are still under-represented in the fields of STEM.
What's the sitch?
According to Science Technology Australia, women made up 29 per cent of the workforce in STEM industries in 2022, compared to 51 per cent of the workforce across all industries. The gender gap starts young, with unintentional bias around the image of a scientist, with toys and books that still promote certain stereotypes and gender roles. Girls are half as likely as boys to aspire to a career in STEM.
As young adults progress to higher education, there are less female role models and strong support systems from educators, with women occupying just 30 per cent of teaching and research roles in STEM at universities, compared to 47 per cent of teaching and research roles across all fields.
If you are one of the 29 per cent of women who completed further studies in STEM that ends up employed in a STEM occupation (compared to 37 per cent of men), the company you end up with may well have the same kind of environment. In 2023, women occupied 25 per cent of senior management roles in STEM industries and only 10 per cent of CEO positions.
It can be daunting to walk this path, which is no different in the food and beverage industry. The Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) report in November showed food and beverage manufacturing is still strongly male-dominated and has larger gender pay gaps than both the national average and median across industries.
The divide was particularly seen in technician/trade roles, with men occupying 87 per cent of positions in food manufacturing and 82 per cent in the beverage industry.
As someone who has seen the food and beverage industry from many perspectives and watched it evolve over time, Dr Angeline Achariya shared how she believes food science can be uplifted by encouraging diversity, and the questions industry needs to ask and answer to get there.
What has your experience been like as a woman in science?
Early in my career in the dairy industry, I used to be the only woman in a cross-functional meeting. You become very used to being the only person of that type in those environments, and then you have all of the challenges of making sure you have a voice, that you're contributing and you're not seen as a token.
We're making progress, it’s just a bit too slow. This year is the 10th anniversary of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, but how much have we moved in 10 years? We still have so many systemic barriers and the conscious and unconscious biases that people hold. When you ask kids at school to draw a scientist now, do they draw a man or a woman?
How do we attract a diverse workforce?
To attract people, you need to be able to talk about your industry in great ways, tell inspiring stories and show role models, which I think we have work to do in that space.
I've been in innovation type roles and always looked after teams that are both technical and commercial. To encourage diversity of thought of all forms to be in there, I think a lot more sharing stories is needed, and showing what jobs are really like.
Not every job has to end up in a lab. Not every job ends up in a factory. You can absolutely be at an executive table or in a boardroom, and there's so many diverse careers that science can take you down.
What is the first step for the food and beverage industry?
I'm a food scientist, and whenever I tell people that I studied Food Science and Technology, they think I must be a master chef or a cook. People don’t think about the science that is involved in developing their food products and getting them onto shelves, and that perception really needs to change. Science is at the starting line of the chain and throughout the entire process, and we probably don't always talk about that enough.
We definitely need to define food science better for STEM conversations and statistics. On the Department of Industry website, food science is categorised under the role of chemist, which doesn’t acknowledge the specifics of the industry at all.
We need food manufacturing to make the products, but it's the food scientists, the chemists, the quality assurance people, the nutritionists who are involved in developing the idea. Then they take the idea to operations and a factory that can make it to the spec you need. All of that is like this massive black box we need to unpack and share with the world. That's what we probably need to work on better as a food industry.
Where do we start?
We have to find new ways to share stories and build capability. There's organisations like the Australian Institute of Food Science and Technology advocating for more people from a STEM perspective.
The onus is also on companies to create diverse environments and amplify awareness. I think DEI programs have helped but looking forward starts with the data.
The companies need to ask; what are my stats, where am I starting off with, and where do I want to be? Start to have those conversations and make that transparent within your organisation.
If you're a brand owner, you can forget your consumers are also educated people. If they're buying your brands, how do you start to promote and talk more about what it takes to get your food to them?
I think we've done some great things talking about farmers, for instance, but there’s a gap in the middle where raw ingredients go in and come out in a can or a packet or a drink. So how do we address that, what does it take to do?
Any closing thoughts?
We need support from every stage of the system, from government, from industry, from companies, and from educators to encourage diversity. It can’t be a one-off thing either, it has to be continuous.
We have days like today for women and girls in science, but it can't just be the one day where we all go and drum beat. We have to continue to ask what’s next. We need to drive that conversation over and over and continue to move forward.
Real talk: it's going to be tough
Even if education and workplace attraction begins to level out, there are also more challenges in keeping women in STEM careers – women are not staying in STEM at the same rate as men. Alongside facing discrimination and workplace harassment, women are overwhelmingly more likely to bear caretaking responsibilities, leading to obvious differences in working conditions.
The WGEA report noted that in the food industry full time roles were occupied by 32 per cent women, but part-time roles came in at 62 per cent. The beverage industry was even more drastic, full time roles were only occupied by 30 per cent women, while part-time roles were occupied by a whopping 85 per cent.
In 2018, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported 80 per cent of women used flexible work arrangements to assist with the care of their child. More progress needs to be made on access to childcare, parental leave, flexible work, and research funding to increase workplace equality.
The United Nations states gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls will make a crucial contribution, not only to economic development of the world, but to progress across all the goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This is not just a nice idea – it’s peer reviewed.
It has been estimated that closing the gender participation gap in the workforce would increase global GDP by 19 per cent on average. A 2023 study found that companies with diverse workforces outperformed less diverse companies by 29 per cent annually from 2013-2022.
It’s also common sense – diverse teams design products and systems that are suited to a larger proportion of the population.
Today, 11 February 2025, marks the 10th annual International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Have a look around at your own workplace, at the industry you work in, at the people you surround yourself with. What kind of environment do you want the food and beverage industry to foster, and how can you help it to grow?
