Balance the Scales

By Shruthi Palanisamy

After attending the Wingecarribee International Women’s Day Event and heard this incredible young person speak, Shruthi Palanisamy a 12-Year student from Chevalier College, I felt I had to share her words with as many women as possible.

Shruthi is the inventor or the Echo-Glove, an assistive device designed to support accessible communication. She’s passionate about using STEM to improve people’s lives and create meaningful change. She was recently honoured to be named 2025 Young Innovator of the Year and selected as one of nine students representing Australia at the International Science & Engineering Fair later this year. Shuthri was also a recent nominee for the Wingecarribee Young Citizen of the Year award.

We were so taken aback by her words, her passion and her vision for women that we all felt we were watching a possible future Prime Minister (no pressure Shruthi).

We are very honoured to share her words so that many more can experience this amazing speech.

International Women’s Day Speech – Balance the Scales

Good morning ladies and special guests,

I’d like to start off by acknowledging how grateful I am to be able to speak alongside and in a room of incredible women today, on a day that celebrates every single one of us.

When I was asked to speak today, honestly, my first thought was: why me? I’m seventeen, I’m still in high school, and there are so many incredibly insightful and brilliant women who would be worthy of your time. And in saying that, I nearly let that question talk me out of saying yes. But then I thought about the theme, Balance the Scales, and I realised that maybe the question itself is exactly the point. Because for so long, “why me?” has been the question that holds lots of women and girls back from stepping into certain fields, especially STEM. And part of balancing the scales is learning to answer that question differently. Not why me, but rather, why not me? So here I am.

But for you to understand why I’m here today, we need to go back to November of 2024. I had been texting a good friend of mine that day who is deaf, and he was telling me about some challenges he faced — one being that communication tools convey words, not feelings. And I just never let that go. That conversation led me to create the Echo-Glove, a wearable device that translates sign to speech, converts spoken responses into text which you can see on the glove, and uses a camera to analyse the signer’s facial expressions and adjust the tone of the speech to match that. By using the companion app, anyone who doesn’t use traditional sign language but can’t communicate verbally can add custom gestures and use them as well.

I share this not just to talk about women in STEM, but because this conversation made me realise something else. It wasn’t the problem that made me create this, but rather a feeling. Listening to my friend talk about words and not feelings and just not being able to let that go. That feeling, that story moved me, and I think that’s worth talking about because we don’t talk about it enough.

Real change — the kind that actually improves the lives of others — isn’t just a cool idea out of nowhere. It starts with someone really caring about another person’s experience and refusing to look away from it. It starts with empathy, with listening, with asking and with understanding.

However, women have spent generations being told that those skills — the skills that build true change — the caring and the listening — are soft, are lesser, and are not what serious fields like science and innovation are looking for. And it shows, with only 28% of the global STEM workforce being made up of women, whereas a field like medicine, which is traditionally a more empathy-centred field, has 70% of its workforce made up of women, however only 25% in leadership roles.

But those skills are exactly the ones that make innovations actually work for people. That’s what makes STEM matter — not necessarily what you build, but who it helps and whether it actually reaches them, and not the other way around. And this can only happen when the people who do the building care enough about the people they’re building for.

So when we talk about balancing the scales, about why it matters that more women and girls are in these rooms, there is an issue here. Every time a girl is pointed away from a field or feels like she doesn’t belong there, we don’t lose a single person — we lose whatever she would have built and created, whatever problem she would have noticed. That’s real progress that just never happens.

I realise that someone like me is not the image that comes to mind when you think of an inventor, and I didn’t either. Growing up, I’d look at the incredibly brilliant people who came on the news and didn’t see myself there either, and thought that a career in something like that wasn’t for me and I wouldn’t belong there.

The image we carry matters more than we realise because it shapes not only how we see the spaces we can go into, but how society envisions these fields as well. For many girls, the first barrier isn’t ability — and never is. The true first barrier is imagination. If you never see someone like you in a space, that message grows in the back of your mind. But the moment one girl steps into that space and tells her story, there is a shift. There is a power that comes with seeing someone else do it as well.

For example, in Norway, girls whose childhood doctor was a woman were 20% more likely to choose a STEM pathway in high school, and this effect carried all the way through university. They didn’t need a program or a campaign — they just needed to see it was possible. And the next girl who walks into that same room can carry a different picture in her mind because someone else was there to shine a light. She leaves a ladder for someone else to climb on their journey.

And that is how change will grow — through many people choosing to step forward, to challenge “why me?” and ask “why not me?”, even if they are uncertain. When women and girls from many backgrounds appear in science, leadership, research and innovation, that change goes beyond representation.

Different lived experiences allow for different questions to be raised and for problems to be revealed that others have stopped noticing. The solutions are stronger because there are more perspectives there to shape them.

A few weeks ago I watched our 2026 Australian of the Year, Katherine Bennell-Pegg, deliver her acceptance speech. She spoke about a dream — bringing the same give-it-a-go spirit from the sports fields to the STEM fields. That idea has really stuck with me, because the give-it-a-go spirit is really about permission.

Permission to try even if you’re not perfect, not confident, still learning. And for a long time, that permission has reached some people more easily than others. Balancing the scales means handing that permission out more widely, making that space earlier and encouraging louder. Because when one girl receives that permission, she does more than just change her own path — she leaves a ladder for someone else to join them.

And in saying all that, how can I not mention the amazing women who have helped back me on my journey so far? To my teachers, my friends and especially my mum — thank you for helping in balancing the scales. You’re the reason that I can stand here today and hopefully inspire other girls to answer the question differently.

I’m so excited to be a part of this generation driving positive and thoughtful change. To keep building ladders, and to make sure that all girls and women — regardless of who they are or where they come from — are free to shape their lives into something meaningful. And one day, we won’t talk about balance — we’ll simply be living in a world that is.

But what I want to leave you with today is this: Balance the Scales is not a theme for one day in March. It is a daily action in the choices we make, in the people we encourage, back and support. Words have undeniable power and can truly change someone’s life by hearing belief in them. The barriers that hold women and girls back were built by people — and they can be taken apart by people as well. And those people are us.

To my fellow high schoolers, I hope you challenge every “why me?” with a “why not me?” and go and get it anyway. And to the incredible women in this room who are already doing the work — thank you. You are proof that change is possible. You are proof that the scales can move. You are the foundations that we and all our future generations will build upon.

Have an amazing International Women’s Day, don’t party too hard this weekend, and thank you so much!