Conference: Gender Equality, Diversity, Inclusion post-Corona: Quo vadis?

Gender equality, diversity and inclusion have been identified as essential pre-requisites for excellence in science, scholarship and research. Despite this, inequalities, gender gaps and biases continue to exist. And they are currently even more apparent as the COVID-19 pandemic acts as a magnifying glass. These developments will be the focus of the Gender Summit 2021. The conference, which is being organised by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation together with the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and acatech, will be held as a virtual dialogue-driven event from 14 to 16 April.

Diversity and excellence

In the course of workshops, discussions and seminars, 80 international experts from the research community, the political sector and research funding organisations will direct their attention to issues revolving around work to foster scientific and scholarly excellence with an eye to gender equality and intersectionality, academic and scientific freedom, and the work situation of scientists and academics. Lecturers at the conference will include the President of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Christian Pape, and Humboldt Fellows  such as Kathrin Zippel, professor of sociology at Northeastern University, USA, and Nil Mutluer, Senior Scholar at the Einstein Foundation at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and a former Philipp Schwartz Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

„This topic  of our conference emphasizes two major points: first, equity, diversity and inclusion are crucial characteristics of science and of academic networks; second, the Covid-19 Pandemic has an impact on these characteristics. This in turn is an incentive for us to consider the situation, weaknesses and threats, opportunities and chances”, President Pape stressed in his address at the Gender Summit 2021.

For the Humboldt Foundation, fostering diversity is an important aim and a central focus of its strategy. With its #ProgressDiversity  campaign, the Foundation is working to provide visible, long-term impetus for the issue of diversity in science and academia. At the same time, the Foundation is working to systematically expand its offerings involving various aspects of diversity such as gender balance.

About the Gender Summit

The Gender Summit 2021 is a joint initiative of the GenderSummit/Portia and acatech as well as the following members of the Alliance of Science Organisations in Germany: The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the Helmholtz Association, the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK), the Leibniz Association, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Max Planck Society, and the German Science and Humanities Council.

The event is open to all interested parties. Registration is free of charge. The conference will be held in English

The Gender Summit was established as a platform for dialogue in 2011 in connection with the FP7-funded project Increasing Capacity for Implementing Gender Action Plans in Science (GenSET). Since then, it has been held in different countries on nearly every continent.

Further information, the programme and registration options for the Gender Summit 2021 you can find here.