ECA Statement
The European Crystallographic Association (ECA) – in agreement with its scope of advancing crystallography and promoting cooperation among scientists – declares its commitment to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusivity in all its multiple activities. This comprises:
- Ensuring gender balance in conferences and meetings.
Organizers of events are encouraged to follow the guidelines first implemented during ECM31 (for a general overview see https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003903). The speaker policy setting up the statistical minimum to be looked for by chairs in their session organization should be reviewed every five years, to monitor the effectiveness of the policy itself. To facilitate this, the statistics related to a specific event should be made publicly available to the community. - Ensuring gender balance in the composition of committees and panels.
As in the case for the speaker policy, the 30% ratio is the bare minimum target to be respected. - Supporting the professional growth and advancement of minorities within the crystallographic community and making research environments more diverse and inclusive.
ECA is not only committed to ensuring gender balance, but also to an equitable geographic distribution of all its activities. This includes Congresses and Schools that will take place in the different geographic areas belonging to the ECA “region”. ECA, as well as meetings and schools supported by ECA, will explicitly take into account diversity in socioeconomic status when considering issues such as setting registration fees or membership fees and distributing grants.
ECA fully agrees with the IUCr Gender Equity and Diversity Statement and the IUCr Gender Equity and Diversity Committee Code of Conduct and underlines the importance of appointing a dedicated advisor to help implement a gender equity and diversity policy.
“Women in Crystallography” project
The “Women in Crystallography” project seeks to enhance the involvement of women—particularly early-career scientists—in international events, with the goal of promoting gender balance among both attendees and speakers.
The project was launched in 2018 during ECM31 in Oviedo, Spain, with the organization of the first microsymposium on Women in Crystallography (MS45). The Chairs of the microsymposium, Julia Contreras García and Annalisa Guerri, were asked to design a logo and motto to be displayed at the beginning of the session. As reported here, the logo and motto have since been printed on limited-edition T-shirts, which are available at various crystallographic meetings in exchange for a donation. The funds raised are used to provide dedicated grants for early-career female scientists to attend crystallography-related events such as congresses and schools. More information about the call for applications can be found here.
“Women in Crystallography, a video series”
GIG-03 has launched the project “Women in Crystallography – a video series” with the aim of preparing and disseminating a series of ten video interviews to celebrate the importance of women in the field of crystallography and science, while, at the same time, raising awareness about the pitfalls and obstacles on the way to reach gender parity in science. The project, initiated by Annalisa Guerri, Chiara Massera and Kamil Dziubek, has received a grant from the Royal Society of Chemistry Inclusion and Diversity Fund (https://www.rsc.org/prizes-funding/funding/find-funding/inclusion-diversity-fund/) and has been endorsed by the European Crystallographic Association, the Società Chimica Italiana, the French Chemical Society, the Belgian Société Royale de Chimie, The Royal Flemish Chemical Society, and the Polish Chemical Society.
The idea for the project stems from the microsymposia entitled “Women in Crystallography” included in the program of the conferences ECM31 and ECM32, that were organised to commemorate pioneering women in crystallography as well as to discuss changes in policies and interventions required to eliminate gender stereotypes, increase sensitivity, and facilitate equal treatment of everyone at all stages of a scientific career.
The first pilot video was released in June 2024 and all the videos are published on the YouTube channel of the European Crystallographic Association here: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSmjbjhvdf6cx2zXPyWyCkpr4yz1gCJP0.
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