News

While South Australia has a long, proud history as a trailblazer, there continue to be persistent inequities and barriers when it comes to gender and other domains.

In an environment of chronic skills shortages, many occupations with strong gender imbalances, such as technicians and trade workers, and health, engineering, ICT and science roles, are more likely to be in shortage. And many of these occupations are in high demand to fulfill the major projects on the horizon.

At the same time, with many of our future industries driven by entrepreneurs, women continue to report hardship in accessing the capital required to start and scale their business.

In the midst of a global war for talent, we cannot afford to leave half of our population behind, and the Department of State Development is acting to address this imbalance.

We are fulfilling the government’s election commitment to creating a business environment in which gender has no bearing on the opportunities available through our flagship Women in Business Program.

The program is a four-year, $4 million commitment to support programs that give entrepreneurial-minded women every opportunity to pursue their goals and create a more diverse and inclusive business community.

The program includes several core initiatives:

• The Women in Business Foundation Program is delivering capability and skills development for women in the formative stages of their business journey.
• The Women in Business Advisory Program supports businesswomen to grow their ventures and enhance their leadership capabilities through scholarships.
• Connecting Women in Business is bringing together regional and metropolitan businesswomen through mentoring, events, workshops and more.
• The Fearless Innovator Grant Program is helping innovative South Australian business owners to access the capital they need to grow their organisations into national and global enterprises.

The Office for Small and Family Business also delivers a curated program of events to arm women in small business with skills, capabilities and growth strategies.

To meet the urgent need to build a skilled and experience defence industry workforce to deliver some of the largest, most complex defence projects ever undertaken in Australia, we must develop a pipeline of skilled workers.

The Australian and South Australian governments are funding a suite of initiatives to build this industrial capability through the South Australian Defence Industry Workforce and Skills Action Plan.

Each of the 22 initiatives in the plan embed increasing diversity – including women – as a key outcome, from primary school through to industry professionals.

Coinciding with International Women’s Day, the South Australian Office for Women is coordinating a week-long celebration of the achievements and contributions of women and girls in South Australia.

SA Women’s Week runs from 1 to 8 March and will support this year’s United Nations International Women’s Day theme, ‘March Forward – it's time to turn promises into progress’.

There will be a range of free and ticketed events across metropolitan and regional South Australia. In addition, the Office for Women has partnered with Adelaide Fringe to offer discounted tickets on SA women-led Fringe shows being held during the week.