Industry, Science and Technology minister Karen Andrews reports the start of work on the government’s ten-year plan to lift women and girls’ participation in STEM. The Australian Academy of Science has released a discussion paper and is seeking feedback which will “inform” a roadmap for the plan.

And grim reading the paper is, reiterating the restraints on women in STEM, despite 330 national initiatives to “foster the participation of girls and women.” The paper also puts an issue on the agenda that, probably unintentionally, questions whether this is a job government can do, without bottom-up and community-wide cultural change. “Positive outcomes will not result from addressing a single factor alone, but rather from the interactions between factors at the individual, family, school and societal levels.”  Responses to the discussion paper are due October 8.