Girls in Property goes national
Imagine taking 190 school girls on a site tour of Barangaroo South to inspire the next generation of city shapers. That’s exactly what this year’s Girls in Property program will do.
The Property Council’s Girls in Property program – established in 2017 to encourage female high school students to consider careers in property – is going national.
New South Wales is kicking off this year’s activities next week with a three-day action-packed program, including TedEx-style presentations and site visits to world-beating projects.
One-day programs will be rolled out in Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and the ACT later in the year.
“This program is about inspiring young women so that they come to property as a first choice, rather than as an accident,” says Property Council’s NSW executive director, Jane Fitzgerald.
According to Fitzgerald, the NSW program – developed in partnership with the NSW Department of Education – has expanded from 120 participants across four public high schools in 2017 to 190 girls from seven schools this year.
Another 2 girls will be attending events in other states, which amounts to 440 participants in 2018.
“We are creating a pipeline of talented young women, but more broadly, we are also providing an extraordinary opportunity for girls to broaden their horizons and open their eyes to industries and careers they may never have thought of,” Fitzgerald says.
The feedback from last year’s pilot is truly impressive.
“Last year, we asked the girls who participated if the program had influenced their subject choices for Year 11 and the answer was overwhelmingly ‘yes’,” Fitzgerald explains.
“One school doubled the number of extension maths classes, something it attributes directly to students getting excited about STEM through Girls in Property.”
Fitzgerald pays tribute to the NSW Diversity Committee for its “imaginative approach” to the female pipeline problem and applauds the work of the Department of Education’s executive director of school services, Jane Simmons, who “put her own personal commitment behind this project”.
This year, the Property Council is partnering with Urbis to establish what Fitzgerald calls a “rigorous data capture regime”. The girls and schools will be surveyed, socio-economic data captured and a baseline established so program’s success can be measured over time.
“One of the exciting things for me is that we are partnering schools with students from a wide range of cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, so Girls in Property is really stepping up our action on diversity and inclusion.
“We have created a buzz beyond the girls who attended last year, and I’m really proud that the four schools that participated last year started chasing me before we’d even started thinking about this year’s program.
“One teacher, who started as a sceptic but ended as a believer, said we are changing lives. What we are doing is very simple – but it’s transformative.”
Watch the new Girls in Property video to find out more about the program and how your company can get involved.