2023 International Women’s Day at DEECA

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[Text on screen: Anna Drutschinin]

Anna Drutschinin:
I haven't actually noticed my gender as a woman at the workplace until I had a kid, like beforehand I’m like “I’m just an employee like anyone else”. And then you have children and you’re like, “now it impacts more!”

[Text on screen: DEECA supports International Women's Day 2023]

Hi, my name's Anna. I'm a senior policy officer at DEECA working on climate change mitigation. So that helps reduce the impacts that we feel from events that are made worse by climate change, like bushfires or flooding or droughts as well.

A lot of the policies that we're working on to help reduce emissions can also reduce local air pollution, they can help reduce energy bills.

[Text on screen: #IWD2023]

Overall, I just feel really lucky to have such amazing female executive leadership. They demonstrate that it's possible to juggle a career and having a family. What I’d recommend is that workplaces not only invest in ensuring women have the flexibility to be carers and career makers, but also ensuring that men are supported to take those carers provisions as well.

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[Text on screen: Lauren Johnson]

Lauren Johnson:
I love being in the outdoors, I always have been, and I pinch myself every day this is what I do for a living.

[Text on screen: DEECA supports International Women's Day 2023]

Hi, I'm Lauren Johnson and I work for the Arthur Rylah Institute. I'm a freshwater research scientist specialising in native fish. I specialise in electrofishing survey methods. So we go out into riverine areas and use a pulse of electricity in the water to survey for our fish.

[Text on screen: #IWD2023]

In the area that I work in, becoming a mum and leaving the workplace for a year, was a challenge in itself. Coming back and not being able to head into the field quite a lot. My supervisor and manager and I, we all worked through that and, we managed to come up with some work that was more flexible for me as a mum. It's been a fantastic experience here and they're just so flexible.

I never pictured myself working in an office. I always thought I'd be outside exploring. So it's just something that's always been ingrained in me.

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[Text on screen: Florine Baerlocher]

Florine Baerlocher:
One thing that's really important is to create a workplace where everybody gets to go to work and feel safe and included.

[Text on screen: DEECA supports International Women's Day 2023]

Hi I'm Florine, I am a principal policy officer in the Renewable Energy Policy Team. I also am involved in the DEECA energy emergency space. So whenever there is floods, storms or fires, I'll be providing support from the energy perspective.

[Text on screen: #IWD2023]

When I read technical information, my brain translates it into my mother language. I understand it and then translate it back to English so I can try and explain it to others. I have this sort of added insecurity - my language skills may not be able to appropriately capture what I actually want to try to say in this technical context. The energy emergency team has been incredibly supportive, reviewing things I have drafted to make sure the information is actually accurate and technically sound.

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[Text on screen: Emily Byrne]

Emily Byrne:
We really need to support everyone who's the first of anything to not feel like a token, to feel like a flag runner for something different.

[Text on screen: DEECA supports International Women's Day 2023]

Hi, my name is Emily Byrne I work in DEECA as a manager working on climate action. Under the Climate Change Act in Victoria. The government's got to set emissions reduction targets every five years.

So I work on the 2035 target, which means 2035 is my lucky number.

[Text on screen: #IWD2023]

I know as a manager if any of my staff need flexibility for whatever reason disability, mental health, parenthood, I can say yes to that without a second’s thought and then work out the details later. That's because it's ingrained into the culture of what we do.

My first full time job, I was the only woman. So every time I introduced my role and they said: “Oh, you're that woman!” So I know what it's like to feel like a token symbol of something. And I'd really hate for anyone to feel like that in the workplace.

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[Text on screen: Joslin Moore]

Dr Joslin Moore:
Challenges, I think for women, especially in the science fields, is a lack of role models, particularly in leadership roles.

[Text on screen: DEECA supports International Women's Day 2023]

My name is Dr. Joslin Moore. I'm a senior research scientist at the Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research. My expertise is in ecological modeling and decision science and using the same kind of tools that we use for airline scheduling or logistics, to actually work out how we can plan our conservation actions and efforts.

[Text on screen: #IWD2023]

As an undergraduate student in the early nineties, there were no women lecturers in chemistry. The top two students in chemistry were female, but there was not a single female lecturer in the whole department. So there was a real lack of role models and I think that still carries through. So that's one thing that we really need to work on.

The more people that we can get into leadership roles and the more diverse we can make that, the better.

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[Text on screen: Anita Smith]

Anita Smith:
It's not just about attracting women into the clean economy, but also to ensure that we retain them.

[Text on screen: DEECA supports International Women's Day 2023]

Hi, my name's Anita Smith. I'm the director of Industry Development and Technology at Solar Victoria. I oversee a fantastic training and workforce initiative, and in particular we're really focusing in on supporting women to participate in the clean economy workforce. We've also got a really innovative initiative to support women, to be employed as apprentices.

We've focused on electricians and now we're moving towards plumbing and air conditioning mechanics.

[Text on screen: #IWD2023]

I think it's a fabulous opportunity to really support young women in particular to come into the clean economy sector.

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