News

The International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2017

To recognize the critical role women and girls play in science and technology, the United Nations Member States established an annual International Day of Women and Girls in Science on 11 February. This year we celebrated the Day in cooperation with the Information Centre of the UN in Prague. With a hashtag campaign titled My favourite woman researcher (in Czech #mojeoblibenavedkyne), we asked people to take a photo of themselves with a picture bearing the...

Unbroken: Women in Czechoslovak Dissident Movement and Charter 77

January 2017 marked the 40th anniversary of the publication of Charter 77, a proclamation calling on the Czechoslovak government to comply with international human rights commitments it has signed up to in the Helsinki Final Act. On the occasion of this anniversary, our team at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences launched a small project to examine the role and activities of women in dissent. By doing this, we wanted to...

Helsinki Group on Gender in Research and Innovation publishes Position Paper on the Interim Evaluation of H2020 and the next FP

The Helsinki Group on Gender in Research and Innovation, an ERA-related group giving advice to the European Commission and the Council, published its Position Paper on the Interim Evaluation of Horizon 2020 and the next Framework Programme. The HG stresses the need to continue and reinforce provisions on gender equality and gender mainstreaming in R&I in the next FP, especially in evaluation, monitoring and capacity building. H2020 and FP9 are crucial instruments to strengthen the...

Teaching load could put female scientists at career disadvantage

Male scientists in the United Kingdom report teaching less than their female counterparts, while women and minorities tend to feel disadvantaged in their careers. Female academics report spending more time on teaching and public-engagement tasks, and less time on research, than their male counterparts, according to a survey of UK university staff in science-based subjects. The study of 2,495 male and 2,374 female academics at 43 UK institutions, published by the London-based charity Equality Challenge...

New initiatives offer child-care solutions to traveling scientists

As dual-career academics and parents of a 2-year-old, Zermarie Deacon and her husband negotiate in advance which conferences each will attend, so that the other can stay at home and take care of the child. Deacon, who is an associate professor in the Department of Human Relations at the University of Oklahoma, was hoping to attend last November’s Gender Summit in Washington D.C. – but her husband was already booked for travel at that time....