A gender balance roadmap for FCC
by Johannes Gutleber (CERN) with Livia Lapadatescu (CERN)
Video produced by the FCC gender equality working group, aimed at encouraging women to take part in the project. Image credit: FCC
During the FCC Annual Meeting which took place in Washington DC in March 2015, a dedicated session was organized with the objective of laying the foundation towards the establishment of a gender balance roadmap for the FCC Collaboration.
The Future Circular Collider (FCC) Study is an international endeavour that fosters cross-disciplinary research involving many knowledge domains. This setup represents an ideal opportunity to reinforce the representation of women in the European science landscape and to stimulate the attractiveness of technical and scientific projects among them. Furthermore, the FCC study through the EuroCirCol Horizon 2020 project is committed to work towards equal representation of women and men in leadership positions.
About 60 participants, including senior scientists and decision-makers from CERN and other institutes involved in the FCC Collaboration, took part in the Gender Equality Session during the FCC Annual Meeting. The session was organised to balance the sharing of experience from representatives of the engineering and physics world with best practices established by government and funding agencies and was chaired by the CERN Diversity Programme Leader, Geneviève Guinot, and the FCC Deputy Coordinator Frank Zimmermann.
Prof. Fabiola Gianotti, CERN Director-General designate, opened the session with a short introductory Q&A session and emphasized the importance of providing an environment of equal opportunities for men and women and monitoring its evolution.
Other speakers included Dr. Theodore Hodapp, Director of Education and Diversity of American Physical Society (APS), Dr. Kate Duncan, current IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) Coordinator for the Eastern US region, Ms. Anne-Marie Horowitz from the US Department of Energy (DoE) and Dr. Jessie DeAro, from National Science Foundation (NSF). They outlined their organisations’ visions and plans to ensure gender equality.
The session closed with the projection of a video produced by the FCC gender equality working group, aimed at encouraging women to take part in the project (see video above). The video is a pilot towards further development of other FCC gender-targeted communication strategies.
“The session marked the starting point towards a common task force”, says Geneviève Guinot, “The fact that this effort is part of the study right from the beginning is a wonderful opportunity. Next steps will include the structuring of the gender equality taskforce to make our actions a sustainable part of the FCC Collaboration”.
