Proud to have been involved in co-authoring an article for @ResFortnight imploring @PhysicsNews to show greater leadership in improving diversity and inclusion in Physics. This was brilliantly lead by @AJPrincep. A couple of key points we raised are below...
Professional bodies - like the IoP - need to show leadership, and enforce good practice. Without such top-down approaches, improving diversity gets left to members of under-represented groups, who can least afford to sacrifice their time and energy to advocate for change.
One key area, where I believe all professional societies and engineering institutes should be doing more, is putting in place robust & effective policies to prevent sexual and gender harassment. I co-authored an article about this for the @iom3 last year: iom3.org/materials-worl…
Three clear action points from the article. Professional bodies should:
1. Use their main Code of Conduct to make clear harassment is unacceptable, and provide accessible reporting routes when harassment does occur.
2. Ensure all meetings run or sponsored by the institute have an appropriate code of conducting and relevant reporting routes and withdraw funding from those which fail to comply.
3. Insist that degree accreditation processes include checks on anti-harassment processes at accredited departments, and refuse accreditation where students are not adequately protected.
As far as I can tell, @PhysicsNews is at 1/3 on this checklist.
@iom3 has moved up to 2/3 and is actively working on Point 3.
If you're a member of a science or engineering society who doesn't meet these three tests, write to the President and ask them to do better!!
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