ATSE ELEVATE "Boosting women in STEM" program launch speech

Background

In November 2022 I was invited to Parliament House as one of the inaugural recipients of the ATSE ELEVATE leadership scholarship, and given a few minutes to respond to a big question. I chose to speak about what it’s like to be a woman in STEM.

That particular talk was very well received and quite important to me. I’ve transcribed it below.

The Speech

Dr Marguerite Evans-Galea AM:

“As you continue your leadership journey, how will Elevate help you increase your influence and impact?”

Kiowa Scott-Hurley:

“One day, I am going to apply for a senior leadership role.

I will have the academic qualifications.

I will have the years of experience.

I will have built the network, done every leadership course, aced the interview…

And I won’t get the job.

I was in my second year of university when I learned about the STEM sieve. Women come into the top of the sieve, and we catch a handful with biology, chemistry, and psychology. A few women filter through to engineering. Fewer still land in maths. Sometimes tech gets the scraps.

Every layer of the sieve requires women to be succulents - to withstand hostile environments and to adapt rapidly. Here at the bottom of the sieve in tech, I feel like a cactus in the Antarctic. I do not belong here.

I also started my first tech job in my second year of university. In the interview, I was told I wouldn’t work with many women. My interviewer knew about the sieve, and he knew it wasn’t a good excuse. He knew job ads were written to hire usually white, very academic, straight, able-bodied, financially stable…men. If I was a cactus in the Antarctic - they were roses in a manicured garden with full time gardeners. The landscape was purpose built for them.

At every job since, I have seen very few people like me. The few women in STEM I found were temporary interns and grads, or people who’d worked in tech longer than I’d been alive. Few of them were in positions of genuine power despite being leaders and mentors. Few of them were recognised for this work. They were hardy succulents, sapping up whatever sunshine was left underneath the leafy roses above.

This is by design.

When I fail to get that senior leadership role, it will be because I was a good woman. Too considerate, kind, empathetic. I will have listened too much and not interrupted loudly enough. I will be a bad leader.

When I fail to get that leadership role, it will be because I was a good leader. Too abrasive, strategic, powerful, and decisive. I will be a bad woman.

Like many women, I will decide whether to leave for a more hospitable landscape or to stay in the Antarctic.

I hope the Elevate program will be the hothouse in the Antarctic that helps me grow above and beyond the bottom layers, visible to others like me in the undergrowth. I will persevere to get that senior leadership role and hold myself and other leaders to account.

And more importantly - by the time I retire I want to see overgrown gardens, buzzing with bees and life. I want to have worked with diverse people who innovate out of necessity, ever adapting to the inhospitable, beyond the boundaries of what the manicured garden will support. “