Equity4ES is an initiative designed to improve the working environment and promote gender balance within the Earth Sciences Department, launched in spring 2021. Coinciding with the International Day of Women and Girls in Science (February 11) and motivated by the UN statistic that “less than 30% of researchers worldwide are women”, Bianca Mezzina sent an email questioning the situation in the department.

Equity4ES focuses on:

• Monitoring recruitment and retention practices to enhance gender equity.
• Raising awareness of gender issues through seminars, open discussions, and a monthly gazette exploring topics such as unconscious bias, gender quotas, and visibility of women scientists.
• Recognizing women’s scientific contributions and ensuring equitable visibility within BSC at large.

You can find more information on the Equity4ES BSC page and the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Equity, Diversity and Inclusion program .

Join Equity4ES

Everyone is welcome to join.

• Monthly Meetings: Held every third Friday of the month at 15:00. You can find information in the Department calendar.
• Mailing List: To subscribe, you can send an email to equity4es@bsc.es .
• Slack Channel: #equity4es .

In this section will add more info about the relevance of our work

Our first action was to make our own inventory, by sending a survey to the department and by presenting the results of our different working groups at the General department meeting on May 27, 2021. The presentation can be downloaded here.

We presented the current organisation of the group and our on-going actions during the department gathering event which took place at the Fabra Observatori on November 23, 2021. The presentation can be found here.

As part of the actions that we wanted to set up within the framework of the WG “Awareness raising”, some of us take care to write a newsletter shared to the whole department, and that we call Gazette (open access).

The idea is to cover the latest debates on gender equality:

We bring to the table arguments in favour and against some policies and initiatives that are being proposed around the world to address the gender equality gap in the workplace, and also in the public sphere.

Gender Equity is a sensitive and relevant challenge that has an impact on all of us. Yet, most of us have never received appropriate training and our insights on the topic are based either on personal beliefs/experiences, causal conversations or other informal opportunities. One of the most important tasks that we are carrying on in the Equality group is to gather a body of trusted knowledge that help us understand the causes and impacts of inequalities. We think that this knowledge is key to feeding better-informed debates and tackling Gender Equity issues at both personal and institutional levels.

With this regular communication, we seek to share with you some peer-reviewed data and work done on different aspects of Gender Equity. Our aims are:

1. Raise awareness on topics that may impact us now or in the future,
2. Give access to useful resources that may help inform different positions on selected topics, and
3. Share with you what we have been learning so far.

The different (mainly internal) presentations we did are presented here (access with VPN).

2025

• EDI Doctoral Symposium (8 May): Slides

2024

• Equity4ES-Department Meeting (4 April): Slides

2023

• Presentation for newcommers (17 April): Slides.

2021

• BSC Annual Meeting (17 December): Slides
• Organisation of the group and our on-going actions-Department Gathering (23 November): Slides.
• Inventory, survey and results of the first-ever mapping of the department-Department Meeting (27 May): : Slides.

You can find the list of seminars that we organized in this webpage (access with VPN).

2024

• Film Screening “Picture a Scientist” (16 February): A screening of Picture a Scientist for the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, raising awareness about gender inequality and promoting equity, inclusion, and sustainability in the scientific community.

You can find the guideline to promote inclusiveness in events organised within the Earth Sciences Department framework here.

2023

• Who is the enemy? (February): Slides

2022

• Parental leave (21 October): Slides
• Equity vs Equality (18 November): Slides

This page gathers different publications and documents that we strongly recommend reading (open access).

Find our photos here