Don’t worry, Dad has evolved a lot since the mid-’90s and thankfully I took his advice as a challenge. In fact, I reminded him of this conversation the other week: "Yeah but you’ve always been different, and times have changed — girls do everything these days".
I wish I had known then that being different was good and that girls could do everything. Like being an astronaut for starters.
Last Friday I was part of a panel discussion at Tūhura Otago Museum about encouraging more diversity into Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths). The special guest was Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, former Nasa astronaut and captain in the US Navy.
Heide has been to space twice and completed five space walks. In her time in the navy she commanded salvage dives and on returning in 2009 achieved the rank of captain and became a chief technology officer.
She told me that she had four brothers and parents who believed education was a path to do better in life. All of them had equal opportunity to go to university — MIT wasn’t in their budget, but it was for new recruits into the navy. When I asked how she then went from diving to space, she said building a station in space didn’t seem that different from salvaging a ship under water. Fair point.
Clearly I’m fan-girling Heide, but it made me reflect — there were a multitude of reasons I didn’t go to university, but I believe one of them was that I just had nothing to aspire or relate it to. I’ve learnt now that I’m an exceptionally curious and dedicated learner when I can apply it and have context, but if I can’t it just doesn’t stick.
Having spent four years now running an engineering business, the majority of our team are the same. They’re practical learners and absolute geniuses at spatial problem solving — spending all day behind a computer or at a desk would be torture.
For our Stem workforces to be diverse, our education needs to be more diverse too — simply putting an "hours" requirement and disciplined structure around it is not going to inspire learners like me. And I don’t think I’m that different — how many others get streamed out of Stem because of their gender, colour or neurodiversity?
Also on the panel were Emily Eastgate, science and engagement co-ordinator at Tuhura, Gemma Tuhega, te reo Maori teacher at Taieri College, and Victoria Campbell, Kai Tahu astronomer. What really resonated with me were their own stories of experiences throughout their life where they’ve been "streamed" into study or roles based on the colour of their skin and being female.
Emily told a powerful story of speaking at a school where one little girl couldn’t believe she was the science teacher from the museum: "but you look like me".
Which also got me thinking. I can’t recall ever meeting a female career role model through school — aside from the Black Ferns and that wasn’t an option. It wasn’t until early in my career that I found some female role models.
There was Judy, the power woman solicitor I nannied for whose fearless opinions and intelligence were mythical to me; Vicki, the publicist extraordinaire at my first full-time hospitality gig, who introduced me to the world of marketing and enrolled me into a part-time marketing diploma; and head of communications, Jacqui, at the bank, who promoted me from temp to full-time marketing co-ordinator and put me through my diploma of financial markets.
My early education and career growth were steered by women, but unfortunately that tapped out at 25 once I became a manager. In the eight years of running my marketing agency I only ever had three female-owned clients and none with a female in an executive level position. As for female-owned or directed clients in our engineering business — zero.
My experience is not unusual. The McKinsey Institute 2022 Women in the Workplace Survey surveyed 40,000 women across 333 organisations in America. Only one in four executive level positions are occupied by women and for every 100 men promoted from entry level to management roles, there are only 87 women — which means a much smaller pipeline through to senior roles.
I don’t have enough word count to solve the issue of the curriculum in this article, but I think a large part of the puzzle is really simple — you can’t be what you can’t see.
This is why I put love visiting schools, bringing groups through the workshop and doing events such as at Tūhura. I hope that by being a female, a high school dropout and having had a late career change into engineering, I might be able to trigger a "hey she’s like me".
Everyone has a story to tell and knowledge to share — share it. Especially if you’re "different" like me.
■Sarah Ramsay is United Machinists chief executive officer.
