WOMEESA Newsletter February 2023

President’s note

To celebrate International Women’s Day 2023 (March 8) we are bringing together three WOMEESA members to discuss cracking the code to a successful career in Earth and Environmental science. I was recently asked in an interview what a successful career would look like to me. I found myself unable to answer straight away. I know what success looks like to funding bodies and to academic promotion committees, but I had never considered how my own version of success differs from standard academic metrics. Have you thought about what success means to you? Maybe IWD is a good time to reflect on it. I am certainly excited to hear from our IWD panel about what success looks like to them. They are each thriving in their careers and have made very different career choices to one another, it should be an inspiring discussion. More details and the link to register are below.

Speaking of success, I often think about how to evaluate the success or effectiveness of WOMEESA, because I agree with Australia’s Women in STEM ambassador, Prof. Lisa Harvey-Smith, that those working in gender equity should be evaluating the effectiveness of what they do. WOMEESA was founded on International Women’s Day in 2018, so our 5th birthday is this month - have we had a successful 5 years? Certainly our membership continues to grow, as does the number of attendees at our events and workshops. And we have several initiatives that have a quantifiable impact, including the awards sub-committee (who nominate women in for awards) and our wikipedia edit-a-thon project, among many other initiatives. Other aspects of our impact are harder to measure, like our advocacy work that aims to raise awareness of inequities in our discipline. Like many who advocate for equality, sometimes I feel like we’re screaming into a void because it is hard to see the impact. But this month was a little different. Recently I have been struck by a number of change champions, of all genders, who have been gender equity allies in quiet ways that only one or two people will ever know about. These are people suggesting women keynote speakers for conference sessions, people emailing others encouraging them to apply for awards, and many enthusiastic offers to write nomination letters for awards for women in our community. All of this was unsolicited and unprompted - just equity allies doing what they do. How did they know to do that stuff? It’s because people like you told them it matters - people who raise awareness of gender equity issues in meetings, serve on EDI committees, advocate for changes in their organisations and call out all-male speaker lists, for example. For all of you out there doing all that work, I want you to know that I can see the success of your work and it’s worth it. Change is happening. It’s slow, but it’s happening.

All the best,

Melanie Finch

WOMEESA news

 

International Women’s Day 2023: Cracking the Code

This year WOMEESA will be hosting a panel discussion on March 7 to celebrate International Women’s Day (which is March 8). We will be hosting three fabulous WOMEESA members from different career stages in academia, industry and government in Australia and New Zealand. Our panelists are Associate Professor Alana Grech from James Cook University, Dr Suzanne Bull from GNS Science and Dr Casey Blundell from Rubix Resources. We will be discussing Cracking the Code to Success in Earth and Environmental Science, in keeping with UN Women’s theme 2023 theme for IWD. You can find out more about our event and register at this link.

 

WOMEESA promotional video and image

With the teaching year starting in many universities WOMEESA have created a video and a poster for advertising our network to students. If you like WOMEESA and think your students will too you can view or download the video at this link or download a static image to add to slides or print at this link. Thanks for helping us spread the word!

 

WOMEESA AESC session

Abstract submission is now open for the Australian Earth Science Conference, to be held in Perth in 2023. WOMEESA is convening a session on Diversity and inclusion in geoscience. Geoscience is one of the least diverse STEM disciplines, which leads to reduced innovation and a failure to attract the best people to our discipline. This session will explore the various factors contributing to this lack of diversity and the changes that can be implemented to make geoscience more inclusive.  Contributions are invited from from both within and outside geoscience, on research about groups that identify as minority genders (women and non-binary), LGBTIQ+, people with disability, neurodiverse, indigenous, and minority races in Australian geoscience. Abstract submission is open until March 1 2023 (yes, tomorrow), and you can register at this link. If you need more time to get an abstract together please contact us womeesa.network@gmail.com.

 

WOMEESA at the AEGC

WOMEESA Vice President and co-founder Teresa Ubide will be presenting the keynote on WOMEESAs behalf at the Australasian Exploration Geoscience Conference in Brisbane in March. If you’re keen to attend you can register for the conference here. Teresa would love to meet more WOMEESA members in person, so be sure to say hi if you’re attending.

 

Local meet-up in canberra

There is a local meet-up being organised for WOMEESA members in Canberra in March. If you’re in Canberra you will receive an email for the details about the event. If you’ve moved to Canberra since joining WOMEESA we will need to update your details - just send us an email at womeesa.network@gmail.com to do that.

 

Other WOMEESA news

 

Awards season

Awards season has arrived! Nominations for the Geological Society of Australia awards are open now! There are a range of awards available spanning early to late career and some awards have never had a female recipient before! Find out more and nominate someone at this link. Closing date for nominations is March 17.

Nominations are also open for the Australian Academy of Science awards, including the Anton Hales Medal and the Dorothy Hill medal for Earth Science ECRs, the Nancy Millis medal for MCRs in the physical sciences and the Jaeger and Mawson medals, which are career awards for Earth scientists. To find out more and nominate someone, check out the website at this link. Closing date for nominations is May 1.

Other awards to keep on your radar: the Eureka Prize program is open now and closes 14 April and applications for the L’Oreal Australia For Women in Science Fellowships close next week.

Did you know that WOMEESA has a sub-committee that nominates women for awards? We started this sub-committee in 2022 because of the data that shows women in our community are under-nominated since we know that winning awards leads to further career success. We are hard at work organising nominations right now. Do you know of someone in the community who we should be nominating? Email us at womeesa.network@gmail.com.

 

ESWN event on navigating workplace hierarchy

The Earth Science Women’s Network are hosting a webinar on navigating workplace hierarchies on Friday May 19. You can read more about it and register at this link.

 

New paper alert

Neethu Madhukumar is a PhD student at JCU and she published a paper this month on improving satellite images for soil moisture information. You can read the paper at this early access link.

We love highlighting the achievements of WOMEESA PhD students - let us know if you or someone you know has done something great: womeesa.network@gmail.com.

 

Dream Big: STEAM ahead program

The STEAM ahead program is a program for undergraduates who are looking to connect with industry mentors and employers. It is for undergraduates that are women or nonbinary. You can find out more at this link.

 
 
 

© Copyright 2021. WOMEESA Incorporated. All rights reserved.