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Celebrating International Women's Day 2023
Thursday, 23 March 2023
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St Catherine's celebrated International Women’s Day, honouring this year's theme of ‘Cracking the Code: Innovation for a Gender Equal Future’. We were fortunate to welcome Sacha Edema OG2006, Head of Government Affairs at the Paul Ramsay Foundation, as our guest speaker. Sacha is a highly motivated policy leader with a demonstrated record of delivering strategic advice and achieving outcomes for Australians. Sacha spoke passionately about the theme of gender equality and urged the students to 'crack the code' and pioneer their own success. Did you know: Globally, women hold only two in every 10 jobs in science, engineering, information and communication technology. Innovations from a team that includes at least one woman are proven to be more economically valuable and have a higher impact than those with only men involved. When Computer Science degrees were first offered in the late 1960s, the gender mix was about equal. Now women only make up 21 per cent of tertiary graduates with a STEM-related degree in Australia. To crack the code to gender equality, we need to leverage inclusive technologies, embrace disruptive innovation and ensure access to education - to combat generational and systemic gender-based discrimination, embedded in our cultural bias for generations. We need to disrupt the current codes of behaviours, beliefs and systems that foster entrenched inequality through innovation, access, and education. We must crack our cultural, economic and social codes and behaviours that entrench inequality. |