GLOBAL GOALS PORTFOLIO 2

  • What is your SDG? And which target did you work on?

We worked on the 5th global goal Gender Equality. The purpose of this goal is to empower women in all they do.

  • Global data on that target – what is the current situation?

30% of the researchers in the largest technology companies in the world are female, which is extremely skewed. This statistic is concerning and unacceptable for a 21st century society. We want gender, in these industries (like science), to be representative of the population (around 50,50). Otherwise, we will have an extremely male dominated view.

  • Local data – how is this target relevant to OUR local context?

In the school we have seen that in quite a few subjects, have a skew between the number of males and females. As we can see in the table below subjects like Applied information technology had no female enrollments at all. This table is from 2018 which is quite recent.

SubjectMFPercentage (M:F)
AIT90100:0%
Comp science12380:20%
physic331077:23%
  • What is your PROBLEM that you worked on for this project? Why is it important and how does it relate to the SDG target?

We focused on the enrollments of female students in STEM subjects. Particularly the subjects in the table above.

  • Design process (Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Feedback) – this is an important part of the presentation. Outline your group’s process and describe the many iterations and changes made to your idea until you settled on the SOLUTION.

We followed the design process, and our first step was to decide on a clear aim or goal for us to work towards. Our aim was to make a positive change to their opinion of STEM subjects to a group of students. The next step was to research the data from previous years in the college. After we saw the small amount of female enrolments in STEM subjects we just had to decide on what kind of workshop or activity we would do. We decided we wanted to do a workshop with year 6s because they are more eager to participate, and they don’t have cemented views on what ATAR subjects they are doing yet. Last semester we did a workshop with year 7 girls, so we kept a similar workshop, but decided to change a few things. We decided to change the workshop slightly, by removing the cups from the resource list which made it more challenging for them to make a raft. We changed the ‘guess the woman in STEM’ activity to just talking about some really inspiring females in STEM. We kept the same video as last semester as we thought it was still relevant and engaging.

  • What was the solution? Did you succeed? Reflect on group and individual successes within the experience (this is powerful – I suggest going in depth into this one with each of you talking about your own challenges/successes).

Overall, I felt the semester was a beneficial experience for both of us as it allowed us to gain many important skills. Compared to last semester, we were more organised, even though we were short on time.

  • What would you do differently? How might you improve on your solution?

I think if we got started a little earlier we would have been able to go to primary schools in the area and conduct these workshops.

  • Where to next – a lot of you have great solutions and initiatives that can be scaled up. Is this something that will happen? If not, is there another individual or group that you may educate/pass it on to?

This was our last year do this elective, so unfortunately we can not continue this project, if an individual wishes to do the same type of project in the future we can provide assistance.

  • Do not forget thankyous to the staff and external community members that have supported your project. And any other closing statements.

I want to thank to Ms Donnelley has assisted us with our project for the whole year, thank you for making this a great class.