ISP and Gender

ISP envisions that women and men in supported research groups and networks should have equal opportunities to achieve their full potential in scientific research. ISP is working to create awareness of the gender biases and to increase women's participation in scientific research to the same level as men's.

Prof Carla Puglia, Programme Director ISP Physics:

- An important goal of the ISP is to increase the representation of women in the basic sciences physics, mathematics and chemistry. To do this, you need to work at all levels – from primary school all the way through to doctoral education. Just getting more students at all into mathematics and physics at university level requires significant inputs during the early school years.

Interview with Prof Puglia.

In 2015 ISP introduced ear-marked extra funds for activities promoting an increased gender equality and balance in mathematics and physics at the supported institutions; i.e. the ISP Gender Equality Grants.

Since then these grants have allowed for an impressive variety of activities targeting gender bias at different education levels, and, even if representing only a very little part of the total budget that the groups dispose during the year, have been catalysts for focusing on gender issues. In parallel, chemistry partners have initiated gender equality promoting activities within the frame of their regular budgets.

Examples of activities are summer schools for high school students, PhD scholarships for female candidates, mentorship programs, tuition fees for MSc students, and workshops for university students and personnel.

Examples of activities

In 2016, ISP, Department of Physics at Uppsala University and Freie Universität Berlin (Germany) jointly organized a Gender summer school at Uppsala University.

The main goal of the summer school was to promote mentorship and networking between young and senior women scientists, something that immediately yielded results. Female scientists from ISP supported activities met each other for the first time at this gathering and had the chance to discuss gender on a multi-disciplinary level.

ISP Summer School 2016

One of the outcomes of the Gender summer school was the foundation of the Eastern Africa Network for Women in the Basic Sciences (EANWoBAS).

EANWoBAS consists of students and staff members in mathematics and physics from universities in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. The network receives ISP core funding from 2019, and is the first ISP supported network of this kind.

EANWoBAS

Read more about our partners and the great work they are doing to improve gender equality.

Dr Dehayem in Kenya

Dr Hoque in Bangladesh

Dr Nannyonga in Uganda

Dr Samiji in Tanzania 

Dr Yeshak in Ethiopia

During the ISP 60th Anniversary in 2021, ISP arranged a digital gender seminar "Gender, diversities and unconscious bias: how to master the playground rules in Academia"

Speakers were ISP, Researchers from ISP supported groups and networks and Uppsala University Department of Gender studies. Participants from four continents joined the seminar.

Read more