Women In Technology - Friday Links - 05/04/2024

Hello everyone, 

It’s time for another edition of the Friday links!  This week, we bring you two exciting WIT events, as well as an update from our mentoring program, and take a look at two causes close to our hearts: gender equality in street names, and period dignity at work.  Read on for some news from our colleagues at the CERN Library, and some interesting career development events and a new summer school for students!

Cheers,

Kate for WIT SC

WIT events

We’re excited to offer two WIT events this month!  

• WIT visit and drinks at the Large Magnet Facility (April 18).  LMF provides CERN-wide support for the engineering, manufacturing and maintenance of superconducting accelerator magnets. During the tour you have the possibility to visit the unique LHC superconducting magnet assembly hall.  Registration is mandatory.
• Climate Fresk (April 30).    The Climate Fresk is a learning workshop led by a community of facilitators (“Freskers”), based on a game with 42 cards taken from the scientific reports of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). The game raises scientific awareness about climate change in a playful and collaborative way.  This session will include an additional module that will cover gender and other kinds of inequalities in relation to climate change.   Registration is mandatory. 

Note: if you have registered for any of these events, but can no longer attend, please cancel your registration so that someone else can take your place!

Thanks as always to our awesome volunteers for helping to organise these events.  If you have an idea for an event and would like to help make it happen, please don’t hesitate to contact us!

WIT mentoring

Are you eagerly anticipating updates on our annual mentoring program?  We are excited to announce that next week we'll be officially unveiling it after finalising all the details. In a major development, this year we're partnering with the LHC Early Careers Mentoring Programme to launch a collaborative initiative. Stay tuned for an announcement in your inbox next week!

Mapping Diversity and 100Elles*: Feminizing street names

(Image credit: Ville de Genève)

Mapping Diversity is a platform for discovering key facts about diversity and representation in street names across Europe, and to spark a debate about who is missing from our urban spaces.  They looked at the names of 155,468 streets across 32 major European cities, located in 19 different countries. More than 90% of the streets named after individuals are dedicated to white men. Where did all the other inhabitants of Europe end up?

In Geneva, as of 2020, only 7% of the streets named after a person bore the name of a woman.  The 100Elles* project has identified an additional 100 women satisfying the criteria for having streets named in their honour.   The Canton of Geneva has acknowledged this discrepancy and has decided to prioritise women when naming streets.  By 2022, an additional 20 streets were renamed to celebrate women.  In May of this year, nine more streets will be renamed.  Learn more at: https://www.geneve.ch/actualites/dossiers-information/objectif-zero-sexisme-ville/espace-public/noms-rues. 

Not-so-fun fact: only two of the streets at CERN are named after women.  

Period dignity at work: We’ve got you covered!

We’ve received lots of positive and heartwarming feedback on our “We’ve Got You Covered” campaign to provide free period products in a washrooms at CERN.  (Thanks to the generous help of the D&I Programme!)  Our supplies are limited, so please only use them in an emergency, and feel free to pay it forward by contributing a spare product of your own if you’re able to.  Don’t hesitate to contact us if you find an empty box, so that we can arrange to refill it!   You can find the location of the nearest box on the GIS Portal by searching under the “Data” tab > Table of content > POI > Main Points of Interest > Hygiene products for women (see screenshot below). 

Why creating a period-friendly workplace makes business sense. "Because talking about periods is still taboo, it’s not always easy to ask a colleague for a tampon – especially if you work in a male-dominated environment. You could pop out to the shop but what if there isn’t one close by?”  Does any of this sound familiar? 

Here are some more success stories about workplaces and schools that provide menstrual products: 

• In Canada, menstrual products are now available at no cost to employees in federally-regulated workplaces.  "Menstruation is a fact of life, and our workplaces should reflect that.”  
• Free menstrual products on the ETH campus
• Period poverty: the city of Geneva takes action
• 20 places around the world where governments provide free period products

News from the CERN Library

Here are the latest acquisitions of the library, suggested by our colleagues from the Diversity & Inclusion programme:

• The little data book on gender (e-book): https://catalogue.library.cern/literature/53gzw-qzb04 
• The authority gap: why women are still taken less seriously than men, and what we can do about it by Mary Ann Sieghart: https://catalogue.library.cern/literature/3yek0-hnh05 
•  Career and family: women's century-long journey toward equity by Claudia Goldin: https://catalogue.library.cern/literature/y77t4-2bh15 

Upcoming events

• CERN Alumni event: Moving out of academia to machine learning (April 26, online event).  For those contemplating entry into this sector, this is your opportunity to come along with your questions and obtain first-hand information from our panellists.
• International Exhibition of Inventions (April 17-21, Palexpo, Geneva).  More than 1,000 inventions from nearly 40 countries will be on display at the Exhibition. You’ll have the chance to meet the inventors behind these creations and exchange ideas with experts from a variety of fields. Like its exhibitors, the Exhibition is innovating by putting you in the spotlight with the theme: We’re all inventors. Themed workshops on the different stages in creating an invention will be on offer to help you develop your creative potential. All the stages involved in bringing the concept to fruition will be covered. Activities for children will also be organised to awaken the scientist in them!
• Perspektywvy Women in Tech Summit (June 12-13, Warsaw, Poland).   The biggest, boldest, and most empowering event for women in new technologies in Europe and Asia.  A two-day conference takes place on 5 stages with over 150 inspirational speakers and special guests, workshops, tech talks, mentoring sessions, and career fairs, partnered with 100 global technology companies.
• Swiss Summer Student Program in Particle Physics (July - September), organized by the particle physics groups of ETH Zurich, the University of Zurich, EPFL and the University of Geneva. The program will allow students to work on detector development or perform data analysis in particle physics.