The struggle for women physicists takes many forms, but certain elements are universal, as these examples from Pakistan, India and South Africa show. Dr Anisa Qamar: “I was the only woman in the physics faculty.” Professor Mmantsae Moche Diale: “In big conferences, there are very few black women.” Professor Prajval Shastri: “Such bad mentoring has…
Professor Mmantsae Moche Diale is a senior physicist at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. All too often, she recalls, walking into an unfamiliar laboratory was an experience that sheeted home the gender disparity that pervades her profession. “If there was equipment that I hadn’t encountered before, I would ask others how to use…
Dr Anisa Qamar is a professor of plasma physics at Peshawar University in Pakistan. “I was born in a small village in the north of Pakistan where cultural stereotypes mean females are not allowed to go to school,” she says. “My parents were well-educated and held education to be a priority, regardless of gender. Indeed,…
Professor Prajval Shastri, astrophysicist and adjunct professor at Australia’s International Centre for Radioastronomy Research (ICRAR), is often confounded by the advice senior physicists, mostly men but also women, sometimes provide to aspiring women. “I constantly encounter colleagues who mentor young men to ‘stick to your passion and press on’, but to women they say, ‘you need to…
IUPAP Conferences Endorsement & Funding to conferences should be contingent on an anonymised review process for selecting contributed abstracts to the conference Endorsement & Funding to conferences should be contingent on a plenary session on Equity, Diversity & Inclusion which should be embedded within the schedule and include expertise from the social sciences on intersectionality. …
Plenary 1: Gender Gap in the Global Survey: Igle Gledhill, Rachel Ivie and Susan White Plenary 1: Gender in publication practices in maths and physics, Helena Mihaljević Plenary 1: Australia inequity, Lisa Harvey-Smith Plenary 2: Women in physics in Sudan, challenges and opportunities, Nashwa Eassa Plenary 2: Molecular motors and switches at surfaces, Petra Rudolf…
Highlights from the 7th IUPAP Conference on Women in Physics 14 July 2021 Women are less likely to have access to essential career resources Women are massively under-represented in physics journals Only 18 per cent of Australian STEM professors are women. “On the first day of the 7th IUPAP Conference on Women in Physics we…
11 July 2021 We need all our best brains to solve global challenges. And we need to empower women who want an intellectual life to explore big ideas. But, over 99 per cent of physics students at Burkina Faso’s largest university are male no women have graduated in physical sciences at The University of El…
We’re assisting with media liaison for the 7th IUPAP International Conference on Women in Physics next week. We understand that you will be speaking at a session of the conference. We’re working with the organising committee to bring the ideas and issues discussed at the conference to a wide public audience via media and social…