[Coral-List] What is going on in European coral reef sciences?

Coralreef Scientist coralreef.scientist at gmail.com
Sun Dec 22 13:58:41 UTC 2019


The International Coral Reef Society (ICRS) issued a diversity statement
and code of conduct under the wonderful motto: “*Coral reefs are diverse.
ICRS should be, too.*” (see here:
http://coralreefs.org/about-icrs/diversity-statement/ for the full
statement).



The society has come a long way and is currently headed by a female
president and vice president. Members of diverse backgrounds make important
contributions to the growing coral reef community.



But what is going on in European coral reef sciences?



(1) The first case refers to the International Coral Reef Symposium
(ICRS2020), which will take place in Bremen, Germany next year. The
original 30-head strong organizing committee consisted of 22 men and 8
women, based on a social media post that raised the issue in February 2019 (
https://twitter.com/CVPPalmer/status/1093424208212824064). Of the 8 women
only 2 (6.6 %) were researchers and the rest administrative support staff.
Since then a few more female scientists (3?) were added raising the quota
to ~14 %.



(2) Last month, the formation of the European Chapter of the ICRS was
announced via coral-list. Three male senior professors form the core
steering group of this chapter. The announcement included a call to female
early career researchers to apply as additional volunteers with a letter of
motivation and CV for “full representation”. This was probably well
intended.



In both cases, an (almost) exclusive male group formed and then
retrospectively added some form of female participation. And no, three
senior males that invite applications from junior females is not full
representation.



A society’s diversity statement exists to guide the actions of its members.
It is also the responsibility of every single man in these committees to
promote the society’s values of diversity and inclusion. “Do not be a
bystander”!



With best wishes from a concerned (and embarrassed European) coral reef
scientist


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