Worldwide the 8th of March is recognized as International Women’s Day. The main reason and significance behind this celebration comes from a desire to encourage and grow civil awareness. We draw inspiration from this and we have asked ourselves: is it still necessary to celebrate women and attract attention to inequalities and injustices between men and women?
International Women's Day
Worldwide the 8th of March is recognized as International Women’s Day. Historically, this date was proposed in 1909 by German revolutionary Clara Zetkin to honor working women. Nowadays, the International Women’s Day is celebrated in many countries worldwide, either as a day of protest or as a celebration of womanhood.
The main reason and significance behind this celebration comes from a desire to encourage and grow civil awareness. We draw inspiration from this and we have asked ourselves: is it still necessary to celebrate women and attract attention to inequalities and injustices between men and women?
We believe the answer is yes, and as a basis, we have turned to science and we would like to highlight the following articles:
- Women in physics - an article published in Nature Reviews Physics, offering a general summary with statistics on the current situation and research results on the topic.
- Discussing underrepresentation as a means to facilitating female students’ physics identity development - a paper published in Physical Review on the importance to keep talking about the underrepresentation of women.
- How stereotypes impair women’s careers in science- an article underlying the importance of unconscious bias trainings.
We recommend you check out the
Did this really happen? comics. The authors of the project draw from female scientists' personal experiences to illustrate unconscious bias in an artful way, all the while being highly informative. Here are some examples to give you a taste for it:
You're a smart girl! |
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| Alice Adenis. 2019. You're a smart Girl. Available online at: https://didthisreallyhappen.net/. [Accessed 6.03.2020]. |
Conference classic |
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| Alice Adenis. 2017. Conference Classic. Available online at: https://didthisreallyhappen.net/. [Accessed 6.03.2020]. |
Another comic artist we recommend is
lunarbaboon - this time a teacher illustrating various themes, whith wich we often identify.
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At MCQST we believe in the strength of an open atmosphere and equal opportunity. It is the cluster's mission to establish a culture of awareness and countering all gender stereotypes. We wish to work together and involve our entire community, in order to achieve a better working environment and open up academic life to a more diverse group of people. We invite you to check-out many of the programs we have established already, and encourage you to contact us with any ideas or suggestions you may have.
- Equal Opportunity Office
- Mentoring Program designed for female PhDs and Post-Docs within MCQST
- Diversity in Leadership Trainings
Authors: Barbara Tautz & Anca Ionescu