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Promoting gender equality in the European astronomical community

Nature Astronomy volume 3, pages 1075–1079 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Striving for equality means striving for an equal, inclusive and diverse world. Gender is just one facet of the broader theme of diversity. Years of dedicated efforts to tackle gender equality in the workforce and throughout society in Europe show positive trends, but the timescales involved in implementing changes and making them effective means equality between women and men remains an important goal yet to be achieved by the majority of players (be these institutes, universities, research organizations or companies). This Perspective reports on the most recent initiatives in science and technology, with a special focus on the field of astronomy.

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Fig. 1: Fraction of IAU women astronomers in IAU adhering (plain) and observer (striped) countries (as of October 2019).

adapted from ref. 15, IAU

Fig. 2: Percentage of respondents in the field of astronomy per geographical area.

adapted from ref. 16, IAU

Data Availability

The data shown in Fig. 1 are taken from the IAU and are publically available at https://www.iau.org/administration/membership/individual/distribution/. The data shown in Fig. 2 are taken from the Joint Global Survey of scientists, initiated by the project A Global Approach to the Gender Gap in Mathematical, Computing, and Natural Sciences: How to Measure It, How to Reduce It, a cross-disciplinary initiative sponsored by the International Science Council. So far, the data have been made available only among the project partners, and they will be published in the final report of the project (due January 2020).

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks all of the colleagues with whom, over the past ten years, the author has exchanged views, engaged in stimulating discussions and attended or organized gender-related meetings and events.

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  1. European Southern Observatory, Garching, Germany

    F. Primas

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  1. F. Primas
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Correspondence to F. Primas.

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Primas, F. Promoting gender equality in the European astronomical community. Nat Astron 3, 1075–1079 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-019-0936-3

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