It’s been a huge week (and year!) of gender empowering activities for Arc and students at UNSW.

On Monday, Arc was announced an Employer of Choice award-winner in the Workplace Gender Equality Agency for the fifth year running. This status has only been awarded to 144 organisations for 5 years in a row, and we are among the 17 tertiary education organisations recognised in 2019. The EOCWGEA award acknowledges the combination of flexible work, parental leave and women in leadership; all achievements and benchmarks that we are proud of.

Women in leadership is a particular achievement this year at Arc with a female Chief Executive Officer (Shelley Valentine), a female Chair of Arc Board (Nadhirah Daud) and a female Student Representative Council (Angel Griffiths). This, along with 9 out of 15 Board Directors being female, is the largest portion of women in leadership in Arc’s 11-year history.

Student-led initiatives have also created 5 additional Arc Clubs that cater directly to female-identifying student training for a range of industries. In Australia, only 16% of STEM graduates (Higher Education and VET) are women, and 27% of the total STEM workforce is female. This means that Clubs like Women in Engineering, Women in Creative Business, Women in Renewable Energy Society, Women in Science Society and Women in Technology Society play a particularly important role in creating communities and networks for UNSW graduates.

On Tuesday this week, Arc Sport launched the third iteration of She Can. She Can creates spaces for women to return to sport, try a new sport or get involved in sport for the first time with beginner classes, run by women for women. Over the course of 2 weeks over 300 students will participate in Yoga, Quidditch, Squash, Rugby, Boxing, Running, Kung Fu, Judo, Fencing, Ultimate Frisbee, Taekwondo, Underwater Rugby and Water Skiing. The initiative has been well-received as an inclusive opportunity for female student of UNSW to get sporty.

We are looking forward to keep on creating equal opportunities for all!