Sparking conversations about women in STEM

When Chloe Chang and Rebecca Leith took the leadership reigns of Monash Nova Rover, the time was right to get the team’s gender equity campaign into gear. To make a bold statement, the Monash Engineering students landed on a brilliant concept - why not use the rover itself to start conversations? Why not turn their 2023 competition space vehicle from their traditional grey and orange to a shade of shocking pink?

So that’s what they did. Recently unveiled at the team’s launch night, the pink-coloured rover is now ready to roll in the 2023 Australian Rover Challenge and University Rover Challenge student competitions, with the added design spec of starting conversations about women in STEM.

Before

After! (2023 rover)

The team’s past successes in the Australian and American competitions give them a decent platform to make an impact. Last year, they won the Adelaide-based local challenge for the second year running and came runner-up in a field of 99 international teams in the world’s premier student rover challenge in Utah. Since their founding in 2017, Monash Nova Rover has quickly become a high-profile performer within the Monash Student Teams Initiative, offering students the chance to put their engineering skills to the test in a competitive process, building career-readiness skills, professional networks and industry partnerships along the way.

Like engineering spaces the world over, student rover challenges at home and abroad have been largely male-dominated. Rolling out a pink rover at competition time is a simple yet purposeful move to start conversations about women’s visibility, participation and inclusion in STEM.

Co-team leads Chloe Chang and Rebecca Leith spearheaded the campaign. Before enrolling in engineering, Chloe was intent on a career in fashion design, while Rebecca was an aspiring professional ballet dancer. Chloe’s interests switched upon seeing a brochure for ‘aerospace engineering’ at Monash, which piqued her interest in forging a dynamic future career in the space industry. Rebecca chose to keep ballet as a passion and pursue a science degree at Monash instead. Excelling in chemistry, she was encouraged to join the Monash Nova Rover science team by a friend and later enrolled in the Bachelor of Engineering to complement her science knowledge with applied engineering skills.

Finding themselves in the minority at university was a surprise to both though, particularly since they’d each attended all-girls high schools. “I was often one of only a handful of girls in my classes,” Rebecca reflects. “I thought, ‘If I’m going to speak up, I’d better say something smart.’” Chloe found herself ‘dressing down’ her natural flair. “Because I’d studied fashion design and pattern-making, I usually wore quirky, feminine outfits I’d designed myself,” she said. “But, I ended up wearing plainer jeans and t-shirts just to fit in.”

The campaign was seeded last year when Chloe got an inkling of how colour could powerfully change the conversation. She’d just designed the chassis of the 2022 rover, the very one that went on to perform so exceptionally well under competition pressure. She posted the design drawings on her Instagram account, all in pink with a sparkly filter, and received an unexpectedly enthusiastic response. “I didn’t know engineering could be so fun and creative,” said one friend. “Congratulations on making a space for yourself there,” said another. “I wanted to do engineering but felt way too intimidated.”

From that one provocative image post, Chloe noticed a rapid opening up of conversations, learnings and connections that she felt needed further exploration. After becoming co-team lead with Rebecca, and after months of consultation and debate, the Pink Rover campaign was finally endorsed by the majority of the team and launched with a largely positive response so far.

Launch night

Rebecca also has well-founded goals for the campaign. Highly aware of the gender disparity in the STEM workforce, she wants to make sure she’s done all she can to push for change before she even turns up to her first job interview. “There’s a big chance I could be the only woman in my future workplaces,” she said. “And I want them to know how seriously I take this issue, and how much I want people to take action to change it. If we can do it as students, they can do it as professionals.”

Expanding perceptions about the typical ‘engineer’ is also critical. “I like pink and I build robots,” said Chloe. “I enjoy fashion and I enjoy machining vehicle parts, and that’s perfectly okay. They’re not mutually exclusive.”

Find out more about Bachelor of Engineering and what it’s like studying Robotics and Mechatronics engineering at Monash.

Follow the links to explore and learn more about Monash Nova Rover and the Monash Student Teams Initiative.