Dear colleagues, I am transmitting a message from Noèlia Fernàndez-Castillo and Bàrbara Torrico, postdocs in my research group:
“Last 5th of July, both the Aggressotype and the CoCA projects were mentioned in the ‘Women in Neuroscience’ workshop at the 10th FENS Forum in Copenhagen, which we had the pleasure to attend. Different researchers from the field presented their personal experiences, either working to bring to light gender differences in science, promoting gender equality programs or as young researchers trying to reconcile work and family life. After their nice and encouraging talks, all the assistants had the opportunity to formulate their questions and/or comments, generating very productive debates.
A lot of effort is still needed in science to reach gender equality, an issue that does not only affect women, and that involves much more than simply fighting against the gender bias in obtaining senior positions. This is a problem that affects all of us in the way we work on science and treat our partners. Several issues were addressed in the workshop that we were not aware of and that we think should be important to disseminate and discuss with our colleagues.
For that purpose, we would like to propose a short talk and a mini-debate on gender equality in the next general assembly meetings of our EU projects that may contribute a bit to deal with this issues. Given the international character of our projects, we could address differences regarding gender policies among countries in research institutions. We consider that people working on the same project should share equal perspectives regardless of their sex, but also of their place of work. We thank the organization of the FENS meeting for this enriching and encouraging workshop.”
Mind the Gap Blog
Dear Noelia and Barbara,
thanks for your report from the FENS, I am delighted to hear that our projects were selected to be featured in the workshop! As you know, dealing with gender issues – which, unfortunately, still means fostering of females to obtain senior positions – is one of the key requirements for EU projects and amongst the agendas of all project leaders. Given the excellent number of female high profile researchers in our EU projects, which are outstanding role models, I think we do well – but we always can do better. In this respect, I really appreciate your suggestion to tackle this problem also in the next GA of CoCA – we will think how we can manage best to introduce a format about gender equity and I am sure we will come up with a suitable solution, and I would highly appreaciate any input for this!
Best Andreas
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Hi Noe and Barbara,
I am so excited to come across this post! This is awesome and inspiring! I can’t be there personally to be part of it, but you have my full support! Wish you have a successful meeting!
Yanli
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