Women In Technology - Friday Links - 07/02/2025
Dear WIT friends,
The news from the US these days is appalling, to say the least. We are dismayed to hear the news of DEI initiatives being cancelled at US institutes, and we want our American colleagues to know: we support you.
Next week, we will celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science on February 11. More than ever, it is important to encourage access to science education and participation in research for those who have been marginalised, and celebrate the achievements of those who have been erased by history.
In solidarity,
WIT SC
Ann Telnaes - The Washington Post
Why we’re leaving Instagram
As discussed in our WIT Annual Review, we’ve decided that we will no longer post on our Instagram account. Despite the concerns about the impact of social media on mental health, and the increasing promotion of misinformation, we still held on to the belief that Instagram could also be used as a tool for good, to celebrate and inspire women in STEM. However, since Instagram’s parent company, Meta, has cancelled DEI initiatives as well as fact-checking, while openly supporting anti-democratic regimes that promote cruelty to women and marginalised groups, we’ve had enough. We can no longer justify driving engagement (and thus, contributing to revenue) on a platform run by billionaires who would cheerfully throw us under the bus for profit.
You can still find us on LinkedIn, and we hope you’ll continue to share your achievements and celebrate our colleagues with us there!
Feb. 11: International Day of Women and Girls in Science
Meet Mary Somerville: the brilliant woman for whom the word “scientist” was coined.
"The history of science is strewn with remarkable women who overcame a crushing dearth of opportunity and towering gender bias to contribute to the corpus of human knowledge in ways that have transformed our understanding of reality, the universe, and our place in it."
https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/12/26/mary-somerville-scientist/
Celebrate IDWGS by joining in these events!
WIT cake sale in support of Aid For All
Tuesday, Feb. 11 from 12:00-14:00 in R1.
Please sign up at the Indico page to bring a dessert, or pass by the sale to raise funds for education for children in need!
https://indico.cern.ch/event/1508314/
CERN D&I Programme awareness campaign
February 11 and 13, 12:00-14:00 in R1, R2, and R3.
Please drop in and learn more about their initiatives, including 25 by ’25.
De Temps en Temps
February 11, 20:00 in Science Gateway
An artistic and scientific creation that explores the perception of time in physics and music, featuring the female quartet DoniSSi and Yasmine Amhis, Scientific Coordinator of the LHCb experiment.
https://indico.cern.ch/event/1485636/
Unpacking STEM Careers: Her Voice in Science
February 11, 14:00-20:30, UNESCO (Paris) and online
Roundtable discussions on diversity and inclusion, the power of media representation, and a screening of the documentary "Women of Science: These women who change our lives”
https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/2025-international-day-women-and-girls-science
Rethinking DEI: Growth, Inclusion, and Safety
February 11, 10:15, online
This is not about abandoning DEI - it’s about making it more effective.
https://pearnkandola.zoom.us/webinar/register/2317382371015/WN_RfNXsfhGQcudvYsMX7YdYA?#/registration
WIT x IPPOG Particle Physics Masterclass for CERN personnel
Feb. 13, 13:30-17:30.
Fully booked; please cancel your registration if you cannot attend!
https://indico.cern.ch/event/1500481/
Particle by Particle: Building Our Equality: A forward-looking discussion uniting women across all generations at CERN.
February 20, 11:00 in Salle Anderson
Join us for a powerful and inspiring event at CERN that brings together women of all generations to discuss the critical journey towards gender equality. This forward-looking discussion will delve into the progress that has been made, the challenges that persist, and the exciting possibilities that lie ahead in building a more equitable future at CERN for women in science, technology, administration, and all other fields.
https://indico.cern.ch/event/1512261
Mentoring@CERN 2025 edition
Registration is now open for both mentors and mentees wishing to participate in this year’s Mentoring@CERN programme, a collaboration between WIT and the LHC Early Careers mentoring programmes.
Take advantage of the transformative power of mentoring! Learn more and register at https://indico.cern.ch/event/1479276/.
Deep Dives: Sexism, Technofeudalism, and Totalitarianism
CDC data are disappearing
"Public-health data are collected with the intention of sussing out which populations most need health interventions; altering those data leaves behind a skewed portrait of reality.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2025/01/cdc-dei-scientific-data/681531/
NASA puts science panels on pause after wave of Trump orders
“We are aware of efforts by some in government to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language,” NASA’s acting administrator Janet Petro wrote in a memo at the time. “If you are aware of a change in any contract description or personnel position description since November 5, 2024 to obscure the connection between the contract and DEIA or similar ideologies, please report all facts and circumstances.”
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-puts-science-on-pause-after-wave-of-trump-orders-2000558539
The tech billionaire war on ‘woke’ is really targeting workers
"The chatter about "woke" is an effort to distract Americans from a simple fact: the desk worker and the factory worker have way more in common with each other than they do with the capitalist leaders who make money on their backs. And the tech billionaires now cozying up to Donald Trump are not friends to any of us.”
https://www.salon.com/2025/01/17/the-tech-billionaire-on-woke-is-really-targeting-workers/
Welcome to the age of technofeudalism
“Because to have democracy, it's not enough to be able to vote every four or five years. You need people who understand what is going on, who are informed about the causes of their discontent. Because if they don't understand the causes of their discontent, then it's easy for them to fall prey to xenophobia, to misogyny, to racism.”
https://www.wired.com/story/yanis-varoufakis-technofeudalism-interview/
The philosopher who warned us about loneliness and totalitarianism: Revisiting Hannah Arendt’s ideas about social isolation and mass resentment.
“...loneliness is the result of a lack of a common ground of experience. This is what she’s getting at when she writes, 'The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, in other words, the reality of experience, and the distinction between true and false ... people for whom those distinctions no longer exist.’”