The push to overcome barriers to women prospering in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) in the workplace needs to begin at primary school, according to a new report from the Office of the Chief Scientist.
That's because girls face those barriers – gender bias, a lack of role models and even the inability to accurately assess their competence in the field – from an early age.
The study, Busting myths about women in STEM, looked at research and data in the area and found the attrition of female talent from STEM-related fields began in primary school and continued through to high school, university and then the workforce.
"The key finding is we are losing female talent right across the STEM pipeline despite the fact there is no innate difference in ability," Roslyn Prinsley, a co-author of the report, said.
"The first way to fix this is to eliminate bias and stereotyping – that includes exposing girls and boys to female role models at a younger age," she said.
"You're not only setting the role models for the girls, you're setting it for boys."
She pointed to overseas research that showed most girls and boys still drew a man when asked to draw a scientist.
Dr Prinsley said the research shows girls were less likely to be able to accurately assess their ability in STEM-related subjects compared to boys even when they had the same skills.
In high school girls are under-represented in advanced STEM subjects, a trend that continues in university where they made up just 13 per cent of information technology domestic completing graduates in 2015.
Firms ranging from the big accounting and advisory firms, strategy firms and technology firms have found it hard to increase the level of female leadership despite often starting with equal numbers of male and female graduates.
"I think that the leakage continues to happen once they join the workforce," Jane Livesey, the head of technology at Accenture Australia, said. "We see that even if you start with an equal balance of graduates by the time you get to senior levels they are far more men."
Accenture has an equal number of men and women in its 16-strong key management group, well above the industry average, but is slightly below the 37.7 per cent industry average for non-management staff.
Ms Livesey said the firm had a course to teach senior leaders about unconscious bias and to challenge their thinking about gender, recruitment and staffing.
She added: "I think a lot of the fear is that you can't succeed at a senior level in technology as a women, so having senior women to look up to is critically important."
