Gender Equality in Science (SCGES) brings together scientists from all disciplines for gender equality

The Standing Committee for Gender Equality in Science (SCGES) is an independent committee formed in 2020 by nine international scientific organizations, most of which are full members of the International Science Council (ISC). These founding partners had worked together on the ISC-supported project “A Global Approach to the Gender Gap in Mathematical, Computing, and Natural Sciences: How to Measure It, How to Reduce It?,” which became known as the “Gender Gap in Science Project”.

The nine founding partners of SCGES were ACM, IAU, ICIAM, IMU, IUBS, IUHPST, IUPAC, IUPAP, and the project GenderInSITE (2016-2021). Over the three years since the first meeting of SCGES in September 2020, these partners have been joined by fifteen international scientific unions that are all members of ISC: IFSM, IGU, INQUA, IPSA, IUBMB, IUCr, IUGS, IUIS, IUMRS, IUPESM, IUPsyS, IUSS, SCAR, UIS and WAU.

The project  contributes to this analysis from three complementary perspectives: 

  • The Global Survey of Scientists addresses issues related to missing role models, feelings of critical exclusion, harassment, or low participation and retention rates. 
  •  The Study of Publication Patterns provides insights into the proportion of women as research authors or the presence of women publishing in renowned journals. See the Interactive tool on publication patterns for visualizations of publication data from STEM disciplines in relation to the gender of the publishing authors. 
  • The Database of Good Practices introduces a conceptual framework to analyze them and provide evidence of effectiveness and impact.

Based on the findings of the project and from discussions held within the network created around the project, SGCES makes several recommendations, starting with instructors and parents, scientific or educational organizations of all kinds, and Scientific Unions and other worldwide organizations, in particular the union members of SGCES.

The full report, “A Global Approach to the Gender Gap in Mathematical, Computing, and Natural Sciences: How to Measure It, How to Reduce It?” can be found in this link.

The SCGES Webinar Series 

The webinar series, which started in 2022, is also continuing. The five webinars organized in 2022-2023 with topics cover the situation of women in various scientific disciplines around the world, the work towards gender equality, the results of research on women and gender, and more broadly, on intersectionality in disciplines where such research is carried out. Examples include: 

  1. “Tomorrow Began Yesterday: Why History Matters,” Patricia Fara (University of Cambridge) 
  2. “Navigating Gendered Barriers to Scientific Knowledge Through Spousal Cooperation: Mrs and Mr Mary Somerville,” Brigitte Stenhouse (University of Toronto & The Open University) 
  3. “Visibility of Women in Science, for an Anti-oppressive World,” Indianara Lima Silva (State University of Feira de Santana) 
  1. “The Gender Gap in Science Project and its Outcomes,” Marie-Françoise Roy (Université Rennes)”
  2. “What interventions for more women in science? Tools, knowledge, and know-how for the creation and evaluation of public policies,” Guillaume Hollard (Ecole Polytechnique)
  3. “The global survey of scientists: focus on Africa, Latin-America, Mathematics and Physics,” Sophie Dabo (Université de Lille), Rachel Ivie (American Institute of Physics)
  4. “New results for the gender gap in publication patterns,” Helena Mihaljevic (HTW Berlin)

All webinars can be viewed on SCGES’s YouTube channel.

SCGES looks forward to bringing together scientists from all disciplines to cooperate on fostering gender equality in their communities at the local, national, regional, and international levels. For further information, please see this year’s report.

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