APPC-AIP conference – What did the Women in Physics group get up to?

The women in physics group doesn’t currently have our own meeting, so the biennial AIP congress is the main time we have to get together and discuss the state of women in physics in Australia. This year however we had extra opportunity, as the congress was held jointly with the Asian Pacific Physics Conference, giving us a fantastic opportunity to connect and network with our colleagues from the Asia Pacific region. The WIP group held a number of activities during the conference, which all occurred on the 6th December. This action-packed day was kicked off by the WIP breakfast event with Prof Nalini Joshi as our guest speaker, followed by a Plenary by Prof Youngah Park and then in the afternoon we hosted two conference sessions with invited contributions by Prof Evvy Kartini and Prof Kate Joliffe. 

Breakfast event 

This great event was sponsored by EQuS, and we were very fortunate to have Prof Nalini Joshi as our guest speaker. Prof Joshi has been an instigator of the Science in Australia Gender Equality (SAGE) pilot that has been tremendously successful with 40 institutions currently signed up and seeking a bronze award in the approach to equity. She spoke on the motivations and need for such a pilot and outlined how all in the room could get involved and assist their institutions in making SAGE a success. The breakfast event also allowed us to thank a number of members for their support of the WIP group over the years, and to form a new committee for 2017/18. 

Plenary by Youngah Park 

After breakfast was done, we moved to the large theatre to hear Prof Youngah Park’s plenary lecture on ‘W-Leadership, Key driver of Innovative Engines’. Prof Park is currently President of Korea Institute of S&T Evaluation and Planning and has a very interesting, and almost unique perspective, as not only is she a senior scientist but she has also served as a member of the National Assembly of Republic of Korea from 2008 to 2012. So her duel perspective on the role and strengths of women in the physics workforces was particular insightful. In particular she outlined the large opportunities that gender innovation can give to a country at large, through sustaining economic growth and opening new markets.

Sessions 

As part of the conference we held two sessions, the first focusing on the state of Women in Physics in the Asian region and the second looking to how we can move forward from where we are. In our first session we heard from invited speaker Prof Evvy Kartini, from Indonesia’s National Nuclear agency about Women in Physics within Indonesia, her personal perspective on this as well as lots of very positive stories about how things are improving. For the remainder of the session we heard contributions from Japan, Korea and China and it was fascinating to see how the state of things are so different in each country. Though, the sad fact remains that in all countries a number of barriers have been identified to women participating fully in the physics world. 

In the session looking about how we move forward, we heard from Prof Kate Joliffe about the strategic mentoring program that has been instituted at Sydney university's chemistry department. After finding a dearth of women at band E (professional level) and determining that there was a lack of people putting in for promotion to this level – the department put in place a mentoring scheme . Now successful, they are implementing the scheme to lower levels, a very interesting case example of positive action. Also in the session Jo Turner reported on statistics she had gathered both from the conference diversity survey and also presented the picture of equity in AIP awards. Both revealed quite a lot about the community, with a very definite case for action – we’ll write a separate post about this.

Thanks to Sarah Maddison for the photos of the WIP events.

Grants for Women's leadership development

See below for details of an opportunity from Women and Leadership Australia:

In 2016 Women & Leadership Australia is administering a national initiative to support the development of female leaders across the sciences.

The initiative is providing women in science with grants for leadership development. More specifically, grant applications are open for women at three levels. Please click on the preferred program link for details. The deadline for expressing your interest for this funding in your sector ends on December 15^th.

Senior management and executive level women leaders can apply for $8,000 part-scholarships to undertake the Advanced Leadership Program

Mid-level female managers and  leaders can apply for $4,000 part-scholarships to undertake the Executive Ready Program

Aspiring talent and emerging women managers can apply for $3,000 part-scholarships to undertake the Accelerated Leadership Performance Program.

Expressions of Interest
Register your interest by simply completing an Expression of Interest form.

Should you wish to discuss the initiative in more detail please contact Ian Johnson at the office of the National Industry Scholarship Program, Women and Leadership Australia on (03) 9270 9016 or via ijohnson@wla.edu.au. 

What's the 'Gold standard' for conference diversity approach

There's much debate currently on how to increase representation of minority groups at scientific conferences.  It's essential that the scientific community gets this right, as conferences are where many careers are made and by dis-advantaging one section of our community we are making it poorer.

So what's the best approach?  Is there a current gold standard that conferences can aspire to in order to maximise their representation of the diverse community that drives them?  This post is inspired by Jenny Martin's PLOS paper, and the hope has been to interpret it into actionable items for organisation committees.

Have a conference policy - A stated commitment by the conference organising committee to achieving representation of the whole community published before registrations open.  This should be disseminated and upheld by all involved in organising sessions and inviting speakers.

Have that policy underpinned by a code of conduct - Often now covered by the code of conduct of a sponsorship organisation, but good to have explicitly stated - what is the expectation on behavior within the conference, where can abuses of this be reported.

Collect and report the data - This is key to tracking and understanding issues in the community and to see if you are meeting your policy goals.  A continued commitment to this, supported by sponsor organisation, will enable long-term trends and improvements to be monitored.  Report gender statistics on Kat Holt's site gathering statistics for all Australian Conferences.  

Have a statement on accessibility - How accessible is your conference and venue to those with disabilities? Are there any special considerations that need to be made for a sector of your community?  Have you given them a contact to flag if they require additional assistance.

Provide childcare bursaries and funding for accessibility needs -  Budget for grants to increase participation from parents of young children and for any needs flagged by those requiring special assistance in attending the conference.

Provide networking session for minority groups - Where identified, provide networking session for those advocating for a particular minority representation.

Provide time in conference schedule for discussion of diversity issues - Diversity representation is a concern of all of the community and time in the main schedule should be made for discussion of these issues, update on progress and approach.  This may be in the form of a workshop session, or if appropriate through abstract submissions.

So would covering all these represent a 'gold standard' in a conference's approach to diversity and inclusion?  Or are their other things that could be included, please do add these to the comments below.  Are there any extra action items, for instance, that perhaps are only applicable to the physics community?

Where do we go from here?

It has now been six months since the Women in Physics group was rejuvenated at the AIP congress in December.  Since then we've had renewed motivation from the AIP council to support our aim, seen a blog established to support the community, have seen our committee members co-opted to a number of other positions in the AIP and now have picked our 2015 Women in physics lecturer.

It's probably time that we started to think strategically about what our aims are up to December 2016, and how we are going to move towards them.  So with that in mind, I’m (Helen – Chair of the Women in Physics group) putting together a strategy, outlining our issues and suggesting an (realistic) action to undertake.  So I thought I’d put this to you all – please add your thoughts in the comments!  What I’ll do is collate them and put a finalised strategy and action to the committee.      

Women in Physics group draft strategy 2014-2016

What are the BIG issues?

1.    Vast drop in young women taking high-school physics in Australia.

2.    Women aren’t reaching top positions in physics and physics-based industries.

3.    Women in developing countries in need of support for their science.

What do we do already?

The group already assists in the well-established AIP women in physics lecture tour, definitely a positive step towards addressing issue 1 through a positive role model. 

Established session at AIP congress every two years.  This has been very successful, along with the establishment of a ‘Women in Physics’ breakfast.  Excellent networking for issue 2.

Establishment of Women in Physics blog http://womeninphysicsoz.blogspot.com.au/ , rather than a newsletter.  The idea is that it will be more ‘evolving’ and allow more people to be involved and comment.

What are the difficulties in doing more?

We’re quite a diverse bunch.  Think that the reason that the astronomers seem a lot more focused (and successful in these activities) is that they are united about a science focus.  With a rapidly declining number of just physics departments it is getting harder to identify who is a physicist.  We are all pretty cross disciplinary these days. 

No one is collating the numbers.  Gender balance statistics used to be collected, but now aren’t. 

Geography, a problem for all Australian societies – membership is spread over an area the size of Europe.  That said, collating numbers should enable us to identify where people are so that we run

Possible things to help us do more?

Partnerships – Women in Engineering,  RACI,  Women in Astronomy?

Involvement with Science Academy’s SAGE project?

Seeking sponsorship – have seen some very impressive  work by the UNSW engineers in seeking sponsorship for their events http://wieunsw.weebly.com/

How to move forward?

At present, partnership must be key.  I propose to approach the Women in Chemistry group of RACI, and suggested a joint event in Sydney (they have run networking events in Melbourne, so would increase their reach too).  Propose event of ‘science leadership’ – plus networking after.