Session 5

After a decade of workforce expansion, the University sector has lost thousands of staff in 2020 through redundancies and attrition.

This session will examine what the future holds for women and also for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander academics – and where they need to move if they are going to have more chance of a promotion.

Our data will show how your university is performing in the employment of women and Indigenous staff – and talk about what the stats might mean.

Indigenous academic staff have comprised just under one per cent of the total academic workforce in Australian universities for a decade, despite a range of public declarations of action.

• Is that ratio good enough for a university in 2021 and will reconciliation with Australia’s First Peoples take a back seat while institutions reconcile their budgets?
• How can universities make themselves more attractive as employers to Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander graduates?

Workforce data appears to show that women may get a fairer go at poorer, lower status universities.

• Are Athena Swan and the other commitments working, or are they camouflage for an ongoing problem?
• Should women all be moving to lower ranked unis to get the promotion they deserve?