Building a Pathway for Diversity in Plant Sciences in Argentina: Highlighting the Work of Women Scientists through Virtual Activities

AUGE, GABRIELA ALEJANDRA; DE LEONE, MARÍA JOSÉ; DEANNA, ROCÍO; OLIFERUK, SONIA; RIBONE, PAMELA ANAHÍ; WELCHEN, ELINA

Biology and Life Sciences Forum

Biology and Life Sciences Forum

Año: 2020 vol. 4

Encouraging the participation of a diverse workforce in academiaincreases plurality as it broadens the rangeof skills, ways of thinking, and experiences. Institutions andprofessional societies have been puttingefforts on building plans that help make workplaces, conferences,education, and extensionprograms more relatable to a highly diverse population. Argentina hasan overall gender-balancedworkforce in the sciences (~53% women/total), with an even higherrepresentation in disciplinesrelated to plant sciences. However, media outlets and nationalconferences related to genetics, botany,plant physiology, ecology, and molecular biology, fail to reflectthose numbers as the proportion of womeninvited for interviews, plenary lectures, and symposia falls below~30%. As a way to increasethe visibility of the wealth of plant science topics and experimentalapproaches in which Argentinianwomen work, and to facilitate connections among them across thecountry and abroad, wecreated the Argentinian Women in Plant Science network. This grouphas grown to over 200 members,representing a wide range of career stages and research topics. SinceApril, and taking advantageof the confinement situation, our weekly webinar series highlightingwomen plant scientists hasreached an average audience of 60?70 participants, with a record of100. Recently, we have begun aseries of open professional development webinars to reach a widerpublic. Our first webinar,focused on scientific poster design, had ~250 participants, most ofthem undergrad and graduatestudents from all over the country covering a diverse range ofdisciplines, including the social sciences.Even though we have immersed ourselves in the plant science communitywith our weekly seminars,we have expanded our goals with activities aimed to reach out to amuch wider audience withwebinars and teacher training workshops, hopefully making plantscience more attainable to all.p { margin-bottom: 0.25cm; line-height: 120%; background: transparent }