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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-05-05 Daily Xml
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University Enrolment, Males

The Hon. A.L. McLACHLAN (16:12): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Higher Education, Employment and Skills a question regarding male university students in South Australia.

Leave granted.

The Hon. A.L. McLACHLAN: A federal education department report recently revealed that South Australia has the lowest proportion of male university applicants in the country, with males making up just 38.8 per cent of applications to begin undergraduate courses this year compared with 61.2 per cent of female applicants. The report also revealed that the proportion of male university applicants in South Australia is well below the other mainland states, such as Western Australia, New South Wales and the ACT, which all reported a male enrolment rate of 43 per cent or above. The findings have also raised concerns about the place of men in a struggling economy, where they can no longer rely on readily available blue collar employment.

The Executive Director of Adelaide University's Australian Workplace Innovation and Social Research Centre, Associate Professor John Spoehr, has called upon South Australia to narrow this gender gap, pointing out that with fewer jobs available in manufacturing it is all the more important to consider a higher qualification, especially a university one. Given that there is a large proportion of South Australian males working in the manufacturing industry, and in view of the industry's potential decline, my question to the minister is: is the government considering initiatives to increase the number of males enrolling in university undergraduate courses?

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (Minister for Employment, Higher Education and Skills, Minister for Science and Information Economy, Minister for the Status of Women, Minister for Business Services and Consumers) (16:12): I thank the honourable member for his question. I read the report with great interest, because I was aware that in fact women had passed the halfway point here in Australia, including in South Australia, and had become better educated than males generally, both in terms of SACE completion, basic degrees and I think even the number of higher degrees as well.

It is absolutely fascinating that even in spite of that—and we know that there is a strong link between education outcomes and higher levels of education attainment and career and income outcomes—nevertheless, we still see the gender pay gap continuing. There is about an 18 per cent difference between men and women, so women are still doing the same amount of work but for roughly 18 per cent less than men.

You would think that these educational trend changes would be operating to narrow that gender gap but they are not—the pay gender gap is in fact increasing—so to me that is a very fascinating observation. The other thing of course is in terms of leadership and, again, senior positions on boards and committees, and leadership positions and executive positions in our large organisations, are still heavily skewed towards men. Women are significantly underrepresented in those senior and executive levels. They are overrepresented in the junior positions in many areas but significantly underrepresented in the senior areas. So as a society we have a long way to go to rectify that imbalance.

I noted that the SATAC report revealed that there were 2,000 fewer applications by male university applicants to South Australian universities, and I am advised that part of this can be attributed to the fact that more females achieve SACE and obtain an ATAR than males. Many males choose skills-based opportunities through VET. Mind you, I do not know how they get to those senior executive positions but, anyway, I have made the observation that there is still a great divide even with these trends.

I am advised that a further reason is linked to the type of professions that require a university degree. I am advised that nursing is a very big influence in relation to that skew, and that when you look at applicants' first preference for university study, nursing is the most competitive of all the courses and the vast majority of applicants are females.

To give an example, there are 900 applications to one of our universities to pre-registration nursing courses and a further 350 to its pre-midwifery course. The data shows that South Australia's gender balance is consistent with other states and territories so they also show that imbalance as well. So we continue to work on gender inequity and all its different faces.

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