Just 25% of fully qualified actuaries are female, the Actuaries Institute’s newly appointed President Nicolette Rubinsztein said in a speech to mark International Women’s Day today.

Closing the gap in this area is a focus for the Institute but it can’t be a solo effort.

The 25% female representation of "fellows" suggests that the "main issue for gender diversity in actuaries is at the start of the pipeline, at school,” Ms Rubinsztein says.

A top-down approach nationally starting with the education system, where only 38% of advanced maths students are females, is a problem area in need of fixing.

The subject is traditionally the recruitment area and a starting point for students looking to pursue an actuarial career.

“The actuarial profession has typically drawn on school children doing advanced maths at school as the feeder for our pipeline. It turns out, that this is where the biggest ‘leak’ occurs,” Ms Rubinsztein said.

“The low take-up of advanced maths by girls at school can be attributed to cultural gender stereotyping and lower confidence in maths, not biological differences in maths ability.

“It is alarming that there is deep set gender stereotyping still happening in Australia, leading to girls not studying maths at the same rate as boys, despite equal ability.”

There must be a co-ordinated effort to encourage girls to further their skills in science, technology, engineering and maths, or STEM as the subjects are collectively known.

About 75% of future careers will require STEM skills, and unless the gap is bridged, it will be difficult to achieve workplace gender equality and diversity.

“I find this situation more troubling than data on the Australian gender pay gap or the percentage of female CEOs. I think this is because we are disadvantaging girls from a very young age,” Ms Rubinsztein said.

“It’s hard to envisage improvement in the latter metrics if we can’t get this formative stage right.”

The Institute for its part will have to reassess the way it reaches out to women, including sending the message out that STEM is “cool”.

“I believe that we can encourage more women to choose an actuarial career by changing how we market our profession,” Ms Rubinsztein said.

“This would be by changing our marketing messaging to portray a more gender balanced workplace, showing how an individual can make a difference to the world as an actuary, illustrating the potential to solve complex problems and demonstrating how we work in collaborative and team-based environment.”