Why do we need to talk about sex and gender perspectives in research?
Following Londa Schiebinger, there are three different levels of change in terms of gender equality. In this blog article you find insights regarding ongoing GENERA CoP activities for each level with a special emphases on the third level.
I. Fix the Numbers:
Change the numbers and increase the participation of women on all levels of their career!
Within GENERA we established a regular collection of a data among male and female physicists on different career levels.
Unsurprisingly there is a lack of women in physics research on all career levels and their disappearance
as they advance on their career. A GENERA working group dedicated to this is working on recommendations
based on the data analyses.
II. Fix the Institutions:
Gender Equality Plans and measures are needed to enhance gender equality within the organizations for a systematic and sustainable structural change.
Within GENERA we collected more than 100 good practices and measures from physics research institution giving inspirations for action. We also created the GENERA Roadmap for those eager to design and implement a gender equality plan in their own research organization.
III. Fix the Knowledge:
The idea behind “gendered innovations” is that research can benefit by the integration of sex and gender perspective creating more excellence results. To give one example from engineering: testing car crash dummies only with male test persons led to a higher injury risk for pregnant women. There are further great examples from environmental and medicine research.
To find examples from the Physics discipline the GENERA CoP created a working group led by Prof. Tomas Brage
(Lund University). The GENERA Working Group aims to review, investigate and produce knowledge about a
gender perspective on physics presenting first results on the GENERA working meeting on April 22/23, 2020 in Rome.
Among the GENERA research organizations the first two levels are well addressed. This is not the case for a gender and sex dimension in research.
By setting up a working group on this issue GENERA hopes to shed some more light on this exciting and innovative issue.
Would you like to contribute to the discussion or join the GENERA CoP?
Please contact lia.lang@desy.de or genera@desy.de
