Since the mid-1990s more women have been graduating from universities and entering the professional workforce in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines, yet the poor representation and limited career-satisfaction of women at senior management levels continues throughout the world. The challenges faced by women in STEM areas include a male-dominated culture, stereotyping, glass ceiling, discrimination and remuneration inequality and the situation for women in the workplace has not drastically improved with time and increased legislation.
The Social Cognitive Theory indicates the dynamic interaction between environment, personal and behavioural factors. Environmental factors include the social and physical environments such as country, location and office environment. Personal factors refer to cognition, affection and biological events, including the individual’s emotional state, habit of thinking and self-efficacy. Self-efficacy describes a person’s judgement of their capabilities to execute courses of action required for performance and these beliefs provide the foundation for human motivation, well-being and personal accomplishment. The Social Cognitive Theory provides a framework for designing, implementing and evaluating behavioural change programs.

It is widely believed that management can do more to implement companywide programs to promote diversity in STEM related workplaces and to create a culture that attracts women and allows them to be productive team members. However, despite the increased understanding of the challenges facing women and all the efforts to address the inequalities, the problem still exists today; in Africa, and in the rest of the world. Based on the Social Cognitive Theory explanation of how people acquire and maintain certain behavioural patterns, a question arises about the connection between women’s behaviour – and what they believe they can achieve – and the ongoing challenges that limit their career planning, progress and satisfaction. Unless women believe that their actions can produce the outcomes they desire, they have little incentive to act. To become ‘The Africa We Want’, African countries should increase the representation, leverage the capabilities and support the career planning and progression of the women in STEM related fields.

It is a great honour and privilege to be invited to do this keynote presentation on “The Africa We want: Education and Health Nexus”. The invitation did come with worry on what real-life example to contextualize. However, the concern for the colloquium is “regarding the lack of educational and health aspirations, especially amongst the youth of African migrant communities”. Hence, this presentation is going to be on health aspiration that most of us subconsciously negate in our embrace of social support. It stems from cultural practice that constitutes a basis of mental trauma that impacts on our health. It is hoped that the exposition would stimulate discussion on ethics, which will translate to education among the Africans in diaspora and possibly arouse some interest in health profession among the youth.

This study employs a Critical Race Theorist (CRT) counter-narrative to the nature of NT remote Aboriginal education policy dysfunction. Over the past decade, national testing in English and Mathematics for primary and junior secondary education achievement reveals NT remote Aboriginal children having consistently under-performed on these tests, at a much lower level than all other groups across Australia. This performance is situated within a broader and stratified education system, of which ongoing education reform attempts have failed to address. This entrenched pattern has NT remote Aboriginal students located at the bottom of this layering, underpinned by an Aboriginal racial identity as a defining characteristic. For NT remote Aboriginal families, this layering is bound within a deepened embeddedness of racism and economic ordering that has relegated remote families to a life of socially-constructed marginalisation, on their own lands.
This study applies CRT as a primary tool of analysis, Aboriginalising its tenets to respond to the unique narrative of NT Aboriginal education. Drawing on research with remote NT Aboriginal principals, community leaders and education policy actors, CRT methodology is utilised to explore the intersecting roles of colonial history, ‘race’ and wealth inequality in the construction and deployment of education inequality. The investigation privileges the voices and stories of NT remote Aboriginal families, strengthened through the researcher’s lived experience of twenty-five years employment as a teacher and senior education administrator in remote communities and urban school settings. In this study the case is made that intersectionality is central in understanding the multi-dimensional ways that Aboriginal education inequality is constructed and utilised in both the continued oppression of
Aboriginal families through institutional hegemony, and the redirection of social justice measures to poor ‘white’ inequality. The CRT tenet of interest convergence/interest divergence is utilised alongside Indigenous CRT frameworks.
This study highlights NT remote Aboriginal families have long been removed from a national Western-designed and formatted education policy environment, leading to a collapse in the purpose of education and its relevance to the existential realities of remote families. This research found this outcome has its underlying causes within an interlocking political economy, which can be navigated through the placement of Aboriginality as the foundation for improving the systemic patterning of NT remote education services. This is reified through privileging a policy pillar framework situated upon Aboriginal cultural inclusion, strengthened accessibility in service provision that is responsive to remote community contexts, and pathways to employment and community development on Country.
Intersecting through this social and economic modelling, a form of remote Aboriginal social capitalism is posited, one that channels capital wealth toward a common Aboriginal benefit, as a foundation to improving the architecture to educational policy performance. This advocacy lies in these problematised domains having remained central and unresolved in NT remote Aboriginal education policy modelling, and remain linked to the existential dimensions of NT remote Aboriginal community life. This study offers its progressive iteration through an Aboriginal political economy operating in NT remote Aboriginal communities and the inalienable free-hold title that living on Country is defined within.