Written by Centre Manager, Dr Susan Northfield
Today is International Women’s Day #IWD2021, and this year the theme is #ChooseToChallenge. “A challenged world is an alert world. Individually, we’re all responsible for our own thoughts and actions – all day, every day. We can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women’s achievements. Collectively, we can all help create an inclusive world.”
Our Centre has embraced the challenge to ensure diversity, gender equality and inclusion from day one; specifically identifying it as one of our key policies to make certain the Centre promotes a positive and fair workplace culture for all participants at all times. This policy guides our processes and decision-making as we develop opportunities for the students and ECRs in our care.
In the spirit of #ChooseToChallenge, we want to shine a light on what this approach looks like for us. For example, Centre participants are expected to:
- Ensure invited speakers, panel compositions, other representatives required for Centre training and conferences etc., are of diverse backgrounds, including gender;
- Ensure we advertise in such a way as to attract and subsequently enroll representative numbers of male/female students and postdoctoral researchers in the Centre;
- Provide diversity in mentor-mentee pairs;
- Provide key contacts at each University for anyone experiencing discrimination;
- Adhere to the ten principles of the Athena SWAN Charter
Today we celebrate the women of our Centre – students, postdocs, chief investigators, executive members, and industry board members. The photo accompanying this post shows a handful of the women at our University of Melbourne #ARCCPTT node, from the Department of Biochemistry & Pharmacology. I want to thank them and all members of the Centre for contributing to providing a diverse, inclusive and supportive environment as we commit to #ChooseToChallenge and call out inequality. #IWD2021
