Argentine Physical Society Gender Committee: building a community with gender equity and equal opportunities

MARISA FRECHERO; FABIANA LAGUNA, NARA GUISON, LUCIANA BRUNO, MARÍA BOLINO, SEBASTIÁN BUSTINGORRY, VICTORIA FERREYRA, MARIEL GALASSI, FLAVIA GÓMEZ ALBARRACÍN, AGUSTINA MAGNONI, JULIANA REVES SZEMERE; CLAUDIA MONTANARI; LAURA C. ESTRADA

Conferencia; 7th IUPAP International Conference on Women in Physics; 2021

AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS & INTERNATIONAL UNION OF PURE AND APPLIED PHYSICS

Created in 2017, the Gender Committee (GC) of the Argentine Physical Society (AFA) is a group thataims to provide science with a gender perspective, promoting actions that build a community withgender equity and equal opportunities. GC was born as a collective reaction to an exclusive all-malelist of plenary speakers for the AFA’ s Annual Meeting. Accompanying this vindication, the AFAMember Assembly established that the plenary sessions should reflect gender balance (30%women). The underrepresentation of women in the AFA is not an isolated event, since although thenumber of women affiliated to the AFA reflects the proportion of women in the Argentine physicalcommunity, the presence of women as speakers at AFA meetings and honorary members is muchlower, showing that the glass ceiling is still there [1].The conformation of the GC is based on diversity: geographical distribution and different careerstages of its members are essential to guarantee full representation of the community. Valuing theplurality of voices, the members are renewed periodically.In this work, we present the GC main activities done to improve the current situation in terms ofgender in physics in Argentina, such as: creation of a space for listening and supporting victims ofgender violence, with the advice of agencies and experts from other areas; generation of a networkof women in physics, a resource that allows us to connect ourselves as scientific collaborators, juriesor panelists; organization of activities during the AFA’ s Annual Meetings as discussion panels andvisibility actions; organization of a workshop that fostered discussion on the challenges women in physics face and the professional skills they need; conducting a survey to assess the living andworking conditions in times of COVID; and a collective, transversal work of cooperation with otherscientific associations with the aim of sharing experiences and joining forces to improve the situationof women scientists. Our activities are communicated by social networks (@afagenero) and throughour website (https://generoafa.wixsite.com/subcomision).[1] M Frechero et al., Is the “glass ceiling” a real problem for women physicists in Argentina? AIPConf. Proc., 1697:060002 (2015).