Good morning everyone. My name’s Adrian Rule. I’m the manager of Science Policy in the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources. And I’m here today to talk to you about the Women in STEM and Entrepreneurship grants program, round 4, otherwise known as WISE.
Before I keep going, I would like to acknowledge that I have the privilege of living and working on Ngunnawal Country, which is where I join you from today. The Ngunnawal have a deep and long connection to this Country, and it’s a connection that continues today and will do so into the future.
WISE round 4 will support existing successful projects breaking down barriers for girls and women in STEM and entrepreneurship to upscale and enhance their impact.
Firstly, some house-keeping. Thank you for joining us today. Please bear with us if we have any technical issues and we’re monitoring the chat, so that’s the best way to communicate with us. This is being recorded, and a transcript will be put up on the business.gov.au/WISE page in the coming days, along with the slides. We’ve had well over 250 registrations, so thank you very much. It’s great to have such strong interest in the program, and in this round. We’ve received some questions prior to today, so thank you again and we’ll address those as part of the webinar, later on. There’ll also be plenty of time left for questions, again through the chat. And we’ll address those in the second half of the webinar. We’ll also take some of those on notice and put our responses up on the website, the WISE page of business.gov.au.
So why have a round 4 of WISE? The short answer is that there’s still plenty of work to do to bring Australia closer to gender equity in STEM and entrepreneurship. We’re fortunate here today to have Professor Lisa Harvey-Smith, our Women in STEM Ambassador join us, to further explain why a fourth round of WISE is so important.
Lisa:
Thank you very much and good morning everyone. It’s a pleasure to join you today from Muwinina Country and I’d also like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land and pay respects to Elders past and present.
My role as Australian Government’s Women in STEM Ambassador is to coordinate actions on gender equity in STEM so we can support a stronger society, a stronger economy and of course, to reduce those barriers to women and girls’ participation in STEM education and careers. So the current state of play, may be no surprise to those on the call, that there is still a significant issue for us to address.
A lot of these figures are from the Government’s STEM Equity Monitor, which is a really useful data resource, if you haven’t seen it already on the Department’s website. And just a snapshot really, in 2020 women made up 28% of people working in STEM industries in Australia. And women were very much underrepresented in leadership in STEM, compared to other industries. So in all but one STEM industry, the proportion of senior women was lower than in other industries outside of STEM. In academia, the number of women reaching the highest academic level of professor is very low at 18%. It’s worth noting that, as you may know, there’s big differences between some fields like engineering and technology and IT, in which women are incredibly underrepresented and fields like medical and biological sciences where women in fact make up the majority, however they don’t make up the majority in leadership. So there is still a problem in those industries where women make up a larger number of the total.
So we’ve got a lot of work to do. And one of those things is really reflected in the gender pay gap in STEM-qualified industries, which is currently almost $28,000 for full time work. So if you’ve read, or indeed contributed to, the Women in STEM Decadal Plan, which is the 10 year plan charting our course forwards to try and tackle some of these issues you’ll know that there’s this really good graphic in there, which looks a bit like a subway map or the London underground to me, it shows some of the main barriers to women’s progression and participation in STEM as they go through their career pipeline. So from the left hand side, primary and secondary schooling, right through to senior career stage. There are a lot of barriers here, from stereotype bias to cultural expectations and the way that society divvies out things like caring roles and the expectations are different on women and men, on average. So there’s a lot of really interesting research behind all of this so it’s really helpful to look into, in the Women in STEM Decadal Plan.
These are the barriers contributing to the lack of women in senior levels and the smaller number of women studying in the engineering, IT, technology spaces. It stands to reason that the best way to proceed is to tackle these barriers head on. In the past the WISE grants had a slightly different focus and they gave funding to smaller programs which were tackling a range of these issues, but what I’ve been really pleased to see is that Government is now really focussing on systemic change, so programs that have been demonstrated to have carried out a transparent evaluation and are also tackling systemic barriers head on. So we’re truly fixing the system, as opposed to fiddling around the edges. And I think that’s what we all want.
So the key to change is systemic change. Systemic change just means changing policies, procedures, practices, the ways that we do things in organisations and in educational settings so that we don’t need a women in STEM Ambassador and we don’t need a WISE grants program in the future. So if we actually change the settings, the environment, the way we do things, and addressing those relationships, connections, power structures within organisations too. So it’s really useful in designing these programs to, if you don’t already employ the help of a social scientist, the can really help you with your theory of change and to tackle those questions head on. It also tackling something really difficult which is, how people think. And there may be some programs which are multidimensional, and that’d be something which would be really exciting to see. Not only changing the way we do things, but also the way people think, which of course, are interconnected.
As program leaders and people applying for this grant round will have to really adopt a systemic mindset. What are the problems? What is the theory of change? What is the desired outcome? And I’m really excited to see the outcome of these applications. Thank you so much for engaging. It’s an incredibly important pillar for the Government’s support for women in STEM and the future STEM workforce in Australia. So thank you for engaging in this process.
Adrian:
Thanks Lisa. A couple of key themes you picked up on there which I’ll talk about more through the webinar; systemic change and evaluation.
Next I’ll talk a bit more about the program, where it’s come from and where it sits within the policy regime and then we’ll go into the specifics of round 4 and where it differs, objectives, eligibility and so on. So the program fits into the broader policy space as follows; in 2015 the Government announced the National Innovation and Science Agenda, of which WISE was part of that policy package. And now we’re up to the fourth round. The three rounds before have supported 54 projects across all states and territories. This round, is providing $13 million over 3 years to support programs to produce systemic change, improving gender equity in STEM. Grant amounts will range from $500,000 to $1 million. It builds on a suite of actions and investments which came before it that aim to encourage gender equity in STEM education and careers, as well as entrepreneurship. The funding profile will enable an extended program delivery as well as reporting and evaluation on how those selected projects have gone. Specific payment schedules will be determined through grant execution with successful applicants.
More on the policy context, in 2019 the Advancing Women in STEM strategy was announced and the key goal or vision of that strategy is “an Australian society that provides equal opportunity for people of all genders to learn, work and engage in STEM”. That was followed in 2020 by the Action Plan which outlined the commitment to a “data-driven approach” and “embedding a culture of evaluations” both of which have influenced changes to WISE rounds 3 and 4. As Lisa mentioned earlier, the STEM Equity Monitor, available on the Industry Department website, was the first key deliverable of that Action Plan. We’ve had 2 editions published so far. The third one we’re working on now. It shows small improvements in gender equity but there’s still a long way to go. And Lisa talked about some of the barriers there that we need to address though WISE and other programs. And in 2020 the WESS [Women’s Economic Security Statement] supported this by providing addition funds to enable this round to be the biggest yet and support the approach of upscaling projects.
Now we’ll talk about specifics of this grant round. Again, to:
- reduce and/or mitigate systemic and cultural barriers to participation in STEM education, careers, innovation and entrepreneurship by girls and women
- reduce the multiplier effect of intersectional barriers to participation, development and leadership of girls and women in STEM education, careers, innovation and entrepreneurship
- increase the participation, development and leadership of girls and women in STEM education, careers, innovation and entrepreneurship
- grow and strengthen the networks and support for girls and women in STEM education, careers, innovation and entrepreneurship
- increase and improve the knowledge and understanding of systemic and cultural barriers to participation in STEM education, careers, innovation and entrepreneurship by girls and women
- grow and strengthen the effect of projects and organisations support for girls and women in STEM education, careers, innovation and entrepreneurship.
The first 3 rounds were great at getting that experience of what works and doesn’t work in this space, but now we’re moving to bigger and better systemic change.
The outcomes of the grant are to:
- grow and strengthen the projects and organisations that have a track record of:
- reducing and/or mitigating systemic and cultural barriers to participation in STEM education, careers, innovation and entrepreneurship by girls and women
- reducing the multiplier effect of intersectional barriers to participation, development and leadership of girls and women in STEM education, careers, innovation and entrepreneurship
- increasing the participation, development and leadership of girls and women in STEM education, careers, innovation and entrepreneurship.
Now I’ll talk about the key changes from previous rounds to this current round. As I touched on before, the grant amount is larger, $500,000 to $1 million. We’re supporting an upscaling of successful projects, there’s a greater focus of the ability to create that systemic change, every project must consider its approach to intersectionality and also must have undertaken an evaluation. Every project must undertake and provide an evaluation as part of their project. How do you do that? Well, I’m glad you asked, the Ambassador has an Evaluation Guide on her website which I can recommend to you if you’re looking for an evaluation framework to use. And the project timeline is longer now. It’s up to 3 years including reporting and evaluation. There are no target areas for round 4 as there were in the previous round, where we tried to address specific focus areas, like engineering, IT, etc., except for the overarching theme that you must address intersectionality.
Now I’ll talk about eligibility. Who can apply? An entity, incorporated in Australia, if you have an ABN. Some of the publicly funded research organisations and agencies, which is set out in Section 14 of the guidlines. Some of the government and non-government vocational education and training (VET) providers as set out in section 14, as well. And an incorporated not for profit organisation.
Which projects might be eligible? To be eligible your project must be scaling up or extending an existing project. As Lisa mentioned, in the first 3 rounds we’ve looked at what worked and what didn’t work and where improvements can be made. And this round is all about putting that into practice. Again, we’re reducing and/or mitigating systemic and cultural barriers to participation. The multiplier effect, we want to address that, as it applies to intersectional barriers. Addressing inequality or discrimination against girls and women in STEM education, careers, innovation and/or entrepreneurship. We’re including project evaluation as part of the project and what needs to be delivered. The project must have at least $500,000 (excl. GST) in eligible expenditure. And a common practice in the current climate that we live in, have a COVID-19 contingency plan as part of your risk management plan. And you must be able to conduct that plan without increasing the grant amount requested.
We’ve said it a few times throughout the webinar that it needs to be an existing project. I have a dedicated slide later on regarding the existing project, where I’ll talk a bit further about that.
Can I submit a joint application? Short answer, yes. Joint applications are welcome. You must have a formal arrangement in place with all parties prior to execution of the grant agreement. The department will only enter into a single grant agreement, so you’ll need to work out who the head of the arrangement is, the contracting party. The lead organisation must be the main driver of the project and be eligible to apply. And I refer you to those sections listed there [sections 4.1, 4.2 and 7.2] for further information on joint applications.
More on eligibility, we can accept multiple applications from one organisation, that is, one ABN. So you may have conducted several projects in the past and be looking to follow those on. We can look at multiple applications. Where project partners are included in multiple applications, that’s fine as well. And from previously funded projects under Commonwealth programs such as the WISE program. It’s important to note that you do not have to be a former WISE participant to be eligiblebut you must demonstrate that your project is a scaling up or extension of an existing project that is delivering WISE program objectives and has an ongoing or completed evaluation. We can only accept applications where you provide evidencefrom your board (or chief executive officer or equivalent if there is no board) that the project is supported, and that you can complete the project and meet the costs of the project not covered by grant funding.
Another important eligibility matter to note is that you can’t be simultaneously receiving Commonwealth grants for the same project you are seeking WISE round 4 funding on. I’ll touch on that further a bit later too.
Who is not eligible to apply? Primary and secondary schools, individuals or trusts, Commonwealth, state or local government agencies, that aren’t listed as eligible in the guidelines.
Now I’m going to talk about the assessment criteria that we use to judge the merit of your application. Criterion 1, alignment with the policy intent. This is the most heavily weighted of the criteria, so 40 points out of 100. This is where you’ll need to describe the problem, gap or opportunity that you’re trying to address and how you will do it. Also this will be considered as part of the assessment around value for relevant money. And this is described further in the guidelines. Moving on to Criterion 2. This one addresses the applicant’s capacity and capability to deliver the project. So your skills, network and experience in successful current projects. This criterion covers your staffing and your ability and resources to deliver the proposed project. And criterion 3 covers the financial capability and it really looks at whether this project will make it or not, or wouldn’t go ahead without the funding. So this is what this criterion will look at.
Now earlier I mentioned that I had a slide about what an existing project is. Here’s some more information: An existing project can be a project that is finished or is still going, so long as it has an ongoing or completed evaluation of its success in meeting WISE Program objectives. Now, that doesn’t mean that the project needs to be 100% successful. What we’re after in that evaluation is a transparent assessment of the track record of that project. It’s ok that it wasn’t 100% successful and it identifies areas for improvement as part of that evaluation. That’s the key message that I want to get across there, is that it doesn’t need to be a glowing 100% successful evaluation result. We’re looking for something that is transparent and shows areas for improvement and you can show how that may be addressed as part of your application.
What is systemic and cultural change? Lasting changeto policies and procedures, leadership and attitudes. It changes the way we’re going to do things. Our WISA [Women in STEM Ambassador] talked about that more in the round 4 launch video, which hopefully some of you have seen.
What is an evaluation? “Evaluation is collecting information to assess the strengths, weaknesses and effectiveness of a program. The goal is to understand what works or does not work, how, for whom, and why”. So again, stressing that it didn’t need to be 100% successful, you might have identified what wasn’t going to work and then that can be addressed in any future projects. To be eligible you will need to submit with your application an evaluation which covers the information in the description above. It may use quantitative and/or qualitative data. It may take many forms, as organisations may use a range of tools or approaches.
We recommend during the course of the WISE projects (and in general for STEM gender equity programs) that the National Evaluation Guide for STEM Gender Equity Programs is used. I mentioned this earlier. It’s available on the Women in STEM Ambassador’s website. It is important to note that evaluations (including those submitted for WISE round 4) should not be curated to show a project is perfect. Evaluations are important to find improvements and create greater impact. Evidence of a successful project will show it is achieving intended outcomes. However, WISE round 4 provides an opportunity to expand these projects, including responding to recommendations of evaluation to make them even better!
So they’re some of the questions we predicted. We also received a number of questions prior to the webinar which I’ll now do my best to address.
- Q: Does my project qualify?
- A: If your existing project is achieving the objectives and outcomes of WISE, and has evidence to show it does, it may be eligible to be funded. The program and grant objectives and outcomes (Section 2) and eligible organisations and activities (Sections 3 and 4) in the program guidelines detail requirements of eligibility to be considered for funding under WISE Round 4. So we can’t go into any further detail on specifics. We received some specific questions about qualification, but can just give general directions as part of this webinar.
- Q: How does this program differ from the Boosting Female Founders (BFF) program (also delivered by DISER)?
- A: BFF supports female-founded start-ups (so quite specific in what it’s trying to do), that are majority owned and led by women, to take their businesses to the next level. WISE supports organisations with projects in place to improve gender equity in STEM and entrepreneurship. That’s the key difference. No funding is provided to individuals/start-ups for the purpose of establishing or growing their business. WISE also does not require participating organisations to be majority women owned or founded.
- Q: The guidelines state the focus is on women in STEM and/or entrepreneurship. Does this mean it can focus on women in STEM or women in entrepreneurship?
- A: Yes. Subject to all eligibility and assessment criteria, projects may seek to break down barriers for girls and women in entrepreneurship, even where the project has no explicit STEM elements.
- Q: Do we need to address all WISE objectives, or just one or more?
- A: Your proposed project must meet the eligibility requirements as set out in the grant guidelines, including section 5.1 (Eligible activities). Your application must also address all assessment criteria, as set out in section 6 (The assessment criteria). The eligibility and assessment criteria have been designed to determine successful applications that meet the objectives of the overall WISE program (as set out in Section 2) and the objectives of this grant opportunity round (as set out in Section 2.1). I think the short answer there is that the more objectives you address, the better you’re likely to do in the merit assessment.
- Q: What about future rounds of WISE?
- A: Too soon, would be the short answer to that. Hopefully we should be able to fill you in on that in coming years.
- Q: Is there a required format for the COVID contingency plan and what planning does it need to include?
- A: The department won’t provide a template for the plans but there are requirements which are set out in the guidelines, and I refer you to page 12 of the guidelines. That can be incorporated into your broader project risk management plan.
- Q: What are the key success factors you use to select those whom you award? What differentiates those who win and those who don’t?
- A: Section 8 of the guidelines steps you through the selection process once your application has been assessed as eligible.
We consider your application on its merits, based on:
- how well it meets the criteria
- how it compares to other applications
- whether it provides value with relevant money.
- Q: How much co-contribution is required?
- A: The short answer is none. But you need to be able to demonstrate how you will meet the ineligible expenses associated with delivering the project. The grant will cover eligible activities and expenses, and they’re set out in Section 5 and Appendices A and B of the guidelines. Where there are ineligible expenses and you will need to demonstrate how they will be met or how you intend to meet them.
- Q: What if my project currently has grant funding, but won’t by the time funding for WISE round 4 commences?
- A: We cannot fund your project, under WISE round 4, if it is currently receiving funding from another Commonwealth Government grant, including WISE round 3. However, it won’t stop you from applying and if you’re successful, you will need to work with the department to manage any existing and new grants so there’s no overlap.
- Q: How do you ensure a diversity of grant recipients?
- A: In order to support a spread of projects across Australia and increase accessibility of STEM-related and entrepreneurship activities and events, the Committee will also take into account the organisational distribution, geographic location of the projects, proposed target audiences, barriers addressed and their intersectionality, when recommending projects for funding.
- Q: Can the grant be used for research?
- A: The project must deliver on the objectives of the grant and meet eligibility criteria. Within an eligible project, “research costs to help support the project outcomes” is one of the eligible activities (Appendix A).
That concludes the responses to the questions we received prior to the webinar. Do we have any other additional questions?
I think one general one which I will address, is there have been a couple of requests regarding the intersectional approach. We have a definition in the guidelines, which is “Gender inequity cannot be seen as separate from other forms of discrimination and disadvantage, as identities and experiences are shaped by a range of social categories of difference, such as culture, race, ethnicity, faith, sexuality, gender identity, education, age etc. The consideration of how people experience multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and disadvantage is referred to as ‘intersectionality’.” So for this round, every project must show they will support girls and women who face additional discrimination or disadvantage through that intersectional approach. We haven’t defined how that might be done, but it must be considered as part of the project as well as the assessment criteria.
We have received some additional questions, and some have already been addressed earlier in the webinar. There are quite a few which are more technical, that address eligibility, so we will address these along with the transcript on the website.
That brings us to the end of the webinar. Thanks to Lisa for joining us. It’s great that you could be here today. Hopefully you were able to get a better understanding of what we’re aiming to achieve with WISE round 4 and again, visit the business.gov.au/WISE webpage where the transcript and slides will be available.
If you have any further questions after the webinar, the contact form on the WISE webpage is the best place to go.
And a reminder, applications close on 2 March, so a little less than 4 weeks for you to get those applications together. Plenty of time if you have any further questions, send them through the webpage.
Thank you and enjoy the rest of your day and good luck with your applications.
