Science: it's your thing! Video Contest The competition is now closed. CONGRATULATIONS TO THE SCIENCE IT’S YOUR THING VIDEO CONTEST WINNERS!!!!  Winning videos selected by the jury panel: Science, it's your thing! Stéphane Debove Country: France #Science Its Your Thing Imogen & Freya Wadlow Country: Australia   Winning video selected by popular vote: The Future Belongs to Us Michelle Goffred Country: United States   THANK YOU TO ALL THE OTHER PARTICIPANTS FOR SUBMITTING WONDERFUL, CREATIVE AND INSPIRING VIDEOS!   The contest The European Commission recently launched a campaign to encourage more young women to choose science in their future careers. With several countries taking part, the cornerstone of the campaign is a fresh and lively webpage, called Science: It’s a girl thing! A video of the same name was made to raise awareness of the campaign. And indeed it did! The video was successful in creating discussion and engagement, triggering an animated debate on how to promote science to young women – a crucial element in bringing the campaign to life. However, feedback about the contents of the film was mixed so the Commission decided to remove it. Although the original video is no longer being used, the campaign for this important cause remains. That’s why the European Science Foundation has teamed up with Curt Rice (check out his excellent blog: http://curt-rice.com/) to devise and sponsor a contest to make a new video that rivals the European Commission original. The competition offered people the chance to highlight the diverse career options that science offers to young women everywhere and to help raise young women’s interest in science! It was being promoted by a number of science bloggers and tweeters and Nobel Prize winner Brian Schmidt (Physics, 2011) has made a donation so that we could give a cash prize! The winning videos has been shown at the European Gender Summit Networking Event 2012, November 29 at the Science14 in Brussels. Prize donor Brian Schmidt is an astronomer at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University. Raised in Montana and Alaska, USA, Schmidt moved to Australia in 1994. As leader of the High-Z SN Search team, Schmidt was integral to the 1998 discovery that the Universe's expansion is accelerating, work that was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. Schmidt continues to work in several areas of astronomy, including leading the SkyMapper Survey, a 5 year project to make a comprehensive digital map of the Southern sky from ultraviolet to near infrared wavelengths. Schmidt is a strong advocate for quality education from primary to tertiary levels, and at improving the career structures for young people undertaking research careers. The Jury Panel Laura Lauritsalo is Senior Administrator at European Commission. She has worked more than ten years in DG Research and Innovation  in particular on issues related to Science in Society, Responsible Research and Innovation, Gender and Science Education. Currently she is working in the Gender Sector in the European Research Area Directorate. Cheryl Miller, founder of Zen Digital Europe, is a recognized digital social entrepreneur with twenty years of international experience in the tech and ICT sectors.  Cheryl's work to promote science and technology to women and girls has been recognized by the United Nations and the European Commission, and she is consulted worldwide as an expert and speaker on topics related to digital inclusion, digital literacy, gender equality, youth and female leadership, and entrepreneurship, especially in STEM fields.  In 2008, Cheryl founded Zen Digital Europe, a sustainability consultancy addressing gender equality and climate change, and promoting ICT and digital media to achieve the Europe 2020 vision. Since 2011, Zen Digital Europe is the Belgian contact point for the European Centre for Women and Technology. Cheryl is a founding boardmember of Greenlightforgirls.org, and held the positions of Technology Chair and European Director from April 2010 to November 2012.  Cheryl is founder of the Women2020 platform, the InspireGirls.org and DigitalMuse.org initiatives, and member of the Strategic Committee for Female Board Pool Belgium. Antigoni Papadopoulou is a Member of the European Parliament, repersenting Cyprus. She is a member of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament. Curt Rice is the elected Pro Rector for Research & Development at the University of Tromsø for the period 2009–2013. He is also the Head of Board for CRIStin (Current Research Information System in Norway). He has served as a co-editor of Linguistic Inquiry and on the editorial boards of several journals. Rice frequently debates and writes about the politics of higher education and research. He is particularly focused on leadership development, gender equality, open access and research-based education; these are the topic of his blog, www.curtrice.com: Thoughts on university leadership. Rice is a member of the genSET science leaders panel. His work on gender equality at UiT has been featured in articles in Science, Nature, and The Lancet. Rice’s extensive work on gender balance in academia has been acknowledged University of Tromsø Gender Equality Prize.

DAY 2: Cafés Scientifiques, Friday 30 Nov 2012, 13:30 - 16:30

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Locaiton: The Thon EU Brussels

Address: Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat 75, B-1040, Brussels. Tel: +32 (0)2 204 3911

Note: 13:30 - 14:00 Arrivals at The Thon EU Brussels

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About the Cafés: Aligning Agendas – Advancing Policy

What are the Gender Summit Cafés Scientifiques? The aim of the Cafés Scientifiques is to facilitate open discussion on selected gender equality topics of current and future importance, namely those that impact on current policy initiatives and help promote quality of research and innovation at institutional, national and European levels.  The user-driven advocacy format of these meetings is designed to improve strategies for using science to benefit European economies and societies by bringing together experts and practitioners from different policy areas and different scientific disciplines to discuss latest evidence and emerging good practices in implementing gender equality policy initiatives. 

Why user-driven policy discussions? The outcomes of the Cafés Scientifiques will contribute to greater integration between advancements made in promoting gender equality in science and ensuring best impact of investment in R&D through different policy agendas, such as HORIZON 2020, ERA and Innovation Union. 

Conclusions and recommendations will be published and used to support researchers, policy makers, and institutions in implementing gender-sensitive approaches in research, innovation and enterprise. 

Why participate? Many individuals and organisations have already demonstrated commitment to advancing gender equality in science by developing successful initiatives and gaining great deal of knowledge and experience in the process, which others can learn from.  We therefore invite all Gender Summit participants 

• to join the discussion in one of the four thematic Cafés Scientifiques
• to share their ideas, projects and findings before, during and after the Summit through the Gender Summit Community Portal
• to contribute recommendations for evidence-based policy initiatives
• to communicate and share best practice through bilateral collaboration between organisations and countries 

How the Cafés Scientifiques will work 

• the online consultation will be open through the Community Portal starting ca. 4 weeks prior to the Summit
• the aim of the online forum is to collect latest case studies and best practice examples, as well  as questions and suggestions for topics to be discussed during the Cafes
• during the meetings, which will run in parallel and last 2 hours each, a panel of three high-level experts will moderated the discussion and help shape it towards practical policy proposals
• a small number of key case studies will highlighted during the meetings as a way of focusing the discussion on major policy issues
• following the Summit, key points from each Cafe will be disseminated through the Gender Summit website
• the Community Portal will provide a forum for after-Summit continued discussion, reflection and dissemination.  

Places will be on a first come first served basis and are limited. We recommend early booking to ensure a place. Below you will find the descriptions of each session for you to choose from.

 

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 Cafés Scientifiques themes

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Café 1 - The leaky pipeline and age discrimination 

Chairs: Prof. Kelly Mack, the new CEO of the Association of American Colleges (AAC&U) and Universities and Prof of Biology at University of Maryland, USA

Marion Dewar, Member of the Cabinet of Maire Geoghegan-Quinn, Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, DG Research, European Commission

Dr. Kate White, Adjunct Research Fellow, University of Ballarat, Australia and Director, Women in Higher Education Management Network

Age features strongly in the career of a scientist, driving expectations and imposing limitations from when it's the right time to complete a PhD; how long should be the 'early career stage'; when is the right time to apply for an advanced grant and when is the best time to have children; to what is the right retirement age.  In many countries, the retirement age is obligatory, and in today's world comes at a time when many scientists are still at the peak of their intellectual capacity.  One possible benefit of obligatory retirement may be that since it affects many more men in leadership roles than women, it may help speed up women's progress to the top.  These and other related issues will be debated against the background of the 'leaky pipeline' to identify opportunities for correcting gender imbalances in different stages of research careers and agree if and how to accommodate the 'age' dimension within our expectation of what a scientific career should be like the in the 21st Century.

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Café 2 - Gender as a "Big Ticket" item in R&D&I

Chairs: Betty Shanahan, CAE, F.SWE Executive Director & CEO, Society of Women Engineers (SWE), USA

Prof. Martina Schraudner, Professor for Gender and Diversity in Organisations, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and the Technical University Berlin, Germany

Dr. Hans M. Borchgrevink, Chair,Working Group Monitoring of the ERA Steering Group on Human Resources and Mobility (EU-SGHRM)

Over the last 30 years there has been a remarkable rise in women’s level of education and participation in the labour market, including in research. Numerous examples are available to show that research and innovation prosper when there is diversity of ideas to shape the creative process.  Gender balance in groups has been shown to produce collective intelligence benefits; involving laypersons and women in particular in the innovation process produced novel ideas about markets that traditional engineers have overlooked; the use of gaming to solve research problem abolished the stereotype that women don't like computer games and showed that they can make the best gamers; and broadcasting innovation problems through the Internet has attracted many women from outside formal R&D structures contributing excellent successful solutions.  The Commissioner Maire Geoghegan-Quinn has used the term 'big ticket' in her recent ERA speeches.  In this Cafe, we shall discuss how this term can be used to define gender as a big ticket item in research and innovation. 

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Café 3 - From manifesto to Gender Equality Standard for projects and institutions

Chairs: Prof. Marja Makarow, Vice-President, Academy of Finland

Dr. Peter Fisch, Head of Unit for Ex-post evaluation and reporting, Directorate General Research and Innovation, European Commission

Dr. Shirin Heidari, Chair of the European Association of Science Editors' (EASE) Gender Policy Committee and Executive Editor of Journal of the International AIDS Society (JIAS)

Many excellent recommendations and guidelines have been produced to help address common gender problems in science.  One of the key outputs from the 2011 Gender Summit was the Manifesto for Integrated Action on the Gender Dimension in Research and Innovation.  Over 4000 scientists from across Europe and elsewhere have signed the Manifesto so far.  This unprecedented support confirms the public response to the EC Green Paper Consultation and to the public consultation carried out as part of the 2011 Summit.  Led by a 'troika' panel of experts, representing the views of research funders, research producers and research publishers, and informed by key examples of existing schemes to adopt equality standards in research programmes and institutions, this Cafe will discuss the feasibility of adopting a cross-European standard for gender equality in science for projects and institutions.  The aim of the 'standard' would be to advance on the consensus already reached for the benefit of HORIZON 2020, Innovation Union and ERA, as well as national science systems.

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Café 4 - GenderSTE: Networking the way to gender equality in science and technology

Chairs:  Prof. Dr. Ines Sanchez De Madariaga Head of the Women and Science Unit, Cabinet of the Secretary of State for Science and Innovation, Spain

Caroline Bélan-Ménagier , Policy Officer, France representative for the Helsinki Group on Women and Science European Disability Policy Development Project Manager, Ministry for Higher Education and Research, France 

Prof. Ineke Klinge, Associate Professor of Gender Medicine, Caphri School for Public Health and Primary Care, Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Maastricht University, The Netherlands

Dr. Ingrid Guldvik, Associate professor, Lillehammer University College, Norway

COST, Europe’s longest running research networking programme, is launching a new initiative, genderSTE, to advance the state of the art in knowledge and policy implementation on gender, science, technology and engineering through creating a network of policy makers and experts on gender, science and technology. Specifically it will enhance the implementation of gender-focussed policy measures for structural change in science and technology institutions and integration of sex and gender dimensions in the content of science and technology and to develop knowledge and resources regarding the sex and gender dimensions of technological development and innovation processes, with specific attention to the Grand Challenges identified in Horizon 2020 and the Joint Programming Initiative Urban Europe. genderSTE will be launched on 28 November. Participants in this café will learn about genderSTE’s plans for the coming four years, have the possibility to contribute to the further evolution of these plans, to put their organisations and countries onto genderSTE’s programme of meetings, workshops and training sessions and to join the genderSTE COST Action.

This Café is run by COST, Europe’s longest running research networking programme.

DAY 2: Plenary Sessions, Friday 30 Nov 2012, 08:00 – 12: 30

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08:00 - 09:00 Arrivals

Location: European Parliament (room Jozsef Antall 4Q2, building JAN )

Address: Rue Wiertz 60, B-1047, Brussels. Tel.: +32(0)2 28 42111

NB This is a different room from DAY 1

Please arrive in good time to clear the security of the European Parliament, making sure you have your passport or ID card with you.

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09:00 - 09:20   Session 6: The role of research evidence in shaping science making and science policies

Location: European Parliament

The future European policy agenda for advancing research and innovation is centred on three key initiatives: HORIZON 2020, Innovation Union and European Research Area. HORIZON 2020 has a budget of €80 billion over the 6 years from 2014 – 2020.

This session will present the latest policy strategies developed by the European Commission to ensure that future investment in research, development and innovation delivers real benefits in terms of quality of knowledge, opportunities for new markets, and continued acceptance of the relevance and importance of science for society.

• Making Progress in Promoting European Research Area
  

Dr. Anneli Pauli, Deputy Director-General on Innovation and ERA (European Research Area), DG Research and Innovation, European Commission

• How ICT and women can contribute to European excellence

Commissioner Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda for Europe

• On the Role of the Chief Scientific Adviser

Prof. Anne Glover, the Chief Scientific Adviser to the President of the European Commission

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09:20 - 10:35  Session 7: Integrating the Gender Dimension in Research and Innovation Content

Location:  European Parliament

Chair: Martin Hynes BE, MBA, C.Eng., F.I.E.I. Chief Executive of the European Science Foundation (ESF)

During the last decade important research evidence has been produced revealing many examples of past biases in science knowledge making, application and communication, such as unquestioned adoption of 'male' as the norm or adopting a 'gender blind' approach when in fact gender acts as a key dimension of the investigated problem.   

In this session, top-level researchers will explain how gender as a dimension of research quality impacts on science knowledge making by highlighting key areas of bias and demonstrating recent discoveries that open up new and exciting directions for research and innovation.

• Involving users in discovering markets

Prof. Martina Schraudner, Professor for Gender and Diversity in Organisations, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and the Technical University Berlin, Germany

• Are women and men equally susceptible to environmental pollutants?

Prof. Marie Vahter, Karolinska Institute, Institute of Environmental Medicine (IMM), Sweden

• Addressing gender issues in impact assessment

Dr Inger Jonsson, University of Uppsala, and Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research (FAS), Sweden

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10:35 - 10:50   Break

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10:50 - 12:05   Session 8: Mainstreaming and Consolidating Gender Research Scholarship

Location: European Parliament

Chair:  Dr. Thomas Eichenberger, Swiss Federal institute of Technology (ETH), Switzerland

Europe has established considerable intellectual leadership in understanding gender issues and there is now available sufficient expertise to apply this knowledge to improve approaches to research and innovation, and the science systems, in general.   

This session will present and discuss how the latest gender research scholarship and expertise can be mainstreamed into science knowledge, researcher training and research methods, and into innovation processes to make sure that, where gender bias has been identified, it is acknowledged and not propagated.

• Strategies for gender balanced higher education

Prof. Veerle Draulans, Associate Professor of gender studies and Prof. Dr. Tine Baelmans, Vice-Rector for diversity and gender programmes, University of Leuven, Belgium

• Gender expertise as knowledge transfer for better project design

Dr. Brigitte Ratzer, Technical University Vienna, Austria

• Not repeating past mistakes

Prof. Curt Rice, Vice-Rector for Research, University of Tromso, Norway

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12:05 - 12:25  Session 9: Open Discussion on Key Points from Plenary Sessions on Day 2

Location: European Parliament

This session will encourage open discussion and feedback from the participants on major issues raised in the presentations throughout the event.

Discussion led by:

Prof. Simone Buitendijk, Vice Rector of the University of Leiden and Member of the LERU Steering Group for the Advice Paper on Gender in Academia and

Prof. Curt Rice, Pro Rector for Research & Development, University of Tromso, Norway

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12:30 - 13:30  Lunch 

Location: European Parliament

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DAY 2: Cafés Scientifiques, Friday 30 Nov 2012, 13:30 – 16: 30

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13:30 - 14:00   Arrivals at Cafés

Location: The Thon EU Brussels

Address: Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat 75, B-1040, Brussels. Tel: +32 (0)2 204 3911

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 14:00 - 16:00   Session 10: Parallel Cafés Scientifiques

Location: The Thon EU Brussels

These participatory sessions will start important consultative discussions on new topics in the discourse on gender equality and quality of research and innovation, gathering delegates input on how to open up new approaches for advocating change and overcoming resistance to change.

The parallel Cafés Scientifiques will address the following topics:

• The leaky pipeline and age discrimination (Café 1)

• Gender as 'big ticket' item in R&D&I (Café 2)

• From Manifesto to Gender Equality Standard for projects and institutions (Café 3)

• GenderSTE: Networking the way to gender equality in science and technology (Café 4)

Read More about the topics and structure of the Cafés

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16:00 - 16:30   Session 11: Close

Location: The Thon EU Brussels 

 

DAY 1: Networking Event, Thursday 29 Nov 2012, 18:30 - 21:00

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18:30 - 21:00   Session 5: Networking Event

Location: Science 14 Atrium
Address: 14b, Rue de la Science 1040, Bruxelles Tel. +32 (0)2 5880014

Join the European Gender Summit networking reception to celebrate the first day of the Gender Summit with a glass of wine at the sleek Science 14 Atrium venue.

This Gender Summit Networking event gives you a chance to meet and connect with other delegates, to create new partnerships and continue discussions in a more informal setting. 

The evening will also host the award ceremony of the video contest “Science: it's your thing!”. Join partners, friends and colleagues and discover the three winning videos of the contest!

There are still some opportunities to exhibit at the Networking event, please email us on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you would like to submit your project or work to be considered for exhibition, and for further information on pricing and logistics.  

Image courtesy of Science 14 Atrium