Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

My passion to empower young women and girls didn't just start when I entered this building. I worked at the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. At the centre I started my own think tank program because I wanted to look at what we were doing in Australia and the United States for women and girls as they progress through their career from entry to leadership positions. So I established W21—The 21st Century Global Women's Initiative. This allowed me to explore important issues around women and work, and to work with the world's best academics in this space, particularly in Australia and the United States.

I launched W21 at the G20 in 2014. We looked at how we could decrease the gender gap by 25 per cent by 2025. Why were we doing this? For sustainable economic growth, not just in Australia but around the world. I also looked at the business case for gender equality and worked with a wonderful academic called Iris Bohnet from Harvard University. Here we discussed creating a pathway for women right through from early career to leadership. In this work we discovered that mentorship and sponsorship played such a role for a woman's success throughout her career. I also worked with Sydney University's Business School and commissioned a report called Women at work: Australia and the United States. Here, one of the key areas that we looked at was women in directorship roles and how we were doing in Australia and the US.

I don't think anyone would be surprised to know that we've still got a lot of work to do. A lot of young women aspire to be women in leadership roles, and women who do reach the top have an obligation, in some part, to support women coming up through the ranks. The reason I did this is that we still do have a lot of work to do in both countries and we can learn from each other about supporting women.

This led me to establish, at a local level—because not all things are grand; we can translate this work locally—a not-for-profit that looked at how to help support women in social housing to transition out of social housing, after intergenerational welfare or being in domestic violence situations, into housing independence and financial independence. Here I ran a program that partnered women in the community—mentors, successful businesswomen and successful community women and men who wanted to support these women out of social housing. There are a lot of barriers for everyone in social housing to transition to independence, which is what we all want—jobs and independence from social housing.

We have other work to do locally, and I'm very committed to this. With the establishment of the Nancy Bird Walton international airport, the aerotropolis and science park will deliver thousands of jobs. I'll be focusing very much on local jobs for women, in particular, because here it is about activating our full workforce's potential for success. This is allowing young girls and women to be interested in STEM—in science, technology, maths and even space industry.

Recently, the Minister for Industry, Science and Technology joined me to launch the Girls in STEM Toolkit at Jamison High School. We joined students from years 8 to 10 to launch the kit, which aims to build female students' confidence about taking STEM subjects at school. The minister and I were able to view other STEM activity, such as drones that the girls were building and four-wheel drive challenges. Girls as young as 12 are leading the way with innovation. They are our young pioneers. These girls are our future, and I want to create as many opportunities as possible for them.

We have appointed Australia's first Women in STEM Ambassador, Professor Lisa Harvey-Smith. She is a strong advocate for gender equality and is raising awareness of issues and prosecuting the case for change. We have also launched the Advancing Women in STEM Strategy. As someone who ran a think tank program in an academic institution that focused on gender equality, I think it is pleasing to see more women having opportunities in our higher education sector. It's great that Western Sydney University's Professor Belinda Medlyn has received an ARC award. Belinda is one of only 19 Australian Laureate Fellows in 2019 who will share in $53.8 million to lead research projects over five years. We need to foster the potential of more women in research and STEM fields.

The Morrison government is committed to implementing policies that ensure Australian girls have every opportunity to live free from discrimination and to achieve their full potential.

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