Call to 'fix the system, not the girls' for tech future

The Girl Geek Academy founders want federal contracts used to boost diversity in the STEM workforce. (PR HANDOUT/AAP IMAGE)

A group of women in technology want billions of dollars in federal contracts to favour tech firms which have a "gender equality action plan".

Submissions are due on Friday for a federal review that will finalise ways to get more diversity in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) - fields of work dominated by men.

Girl Geek Academy co-founder and CEO Sarah Moran said more than 1500 companies could help deliver the recommendations if change was tied to federal spending.

The academy, an organisation working for gender equality, wants to bring one million women and girls into the industry by 2030.

"We need to fix the system, not the girls ... the government has both the power and money to change it," Ms Moran told AAP.

"If you want to receive public funds, you need to do the work to support women in the tech industry."

Documents show $16 billion in spending in the past financial year on contracts over $100,000 went to suppliers of various cloud services, computer programmers, forensic IT Services, information technology consultants, software and hardware engineering, and system administrators.

Those procurement "carrots" could be used to encourage the tech industry to deliver gender equality, Ms Moran said.

"We’re calling on the federal government to ensure tech companies present gender equality action plans before they get access to the government chequebook," she said.

Earlier this year, Girl Geek Academy surveyed more than 300 people in tech and included their feedback in a submission to the review.

"Until now, we have expected women to be 'more resilient' or learn to 'act like the boys or to 'speak up and make change' in order to make it in a STEM career," Ms Moran said. 

"But placing the burden on individual women at individual worksites to change things is neither fair nor productive."

She said women shared many examples of gender discrimination, unconscious bias and sexual harassment within the technology industry.

"We only describe it as a widespread, systemic pattern," she said.

The final diversity in STEM report will be handed to Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic next month.

Australia's national science and research priorities are also under review, along with a national science statement due in October.

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