Christiane Amanpour, CNN, on Gender Equality

Christiane Amanpour underscores the need for gender equality in all aspects of society and specifically in and through media: "From all my experience working in the field for over 20 years now I see more and more women in the field as journalists... What I see is that this is making a big change in the way stories are covered. Women do not report only on women... They report on what now is almost exclusively the human factor when it comes to war, crisis, disaster or even opportunities, hope and challenges... Women still have to face very difficult threats, very difficult situations of abuse, very difficult situations of intimidation and out and out being banned from taking part in the field of journalism. It is still a difficult world... Those of you women around the world who are determined, and no matter what profession you choose, who are determined to make it and battle the odds and make sure that you never hear the word NO, that I think is the hope and the optimism and the opportunity that we can benefit from and that we can put back into society..."

A video prepared by CNN in connection with the UNESCO "Women Make the News" 2013 initiative (WMN) for International Women's Day, to be celebrated on 8 March 2013.

International Women's Day Celebrations

Every year on 8 March, UNESCO celebrates International Women's Day by hosting a flagship programme consisting of round-tables, conferences, exhibitions and cultural events that highlight issues relating to the empowerment of women and the promotion of gender equality.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, co-winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize

 On 8 March 2006, the President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirlea, opened an International conference entitled Women in Politics organized by UNESCO within the framework of the celebration of International Women's Day.

A New UNESCO Center

The UNESCO Executive Board is expected to approve, at its next meeting in early April, the proposal to create a Category 2 Center Regional Research and Documentation for Women, Gender and Peace Building in the Great Lakes Region of Africa. The Democratic Republic of the Congo reaffirmed its willingness to host the center.

Read the feasibility study!

International Women's Day 2010

Every year in March, UNESCO celebrates International Women’s Day (March 8) by hosting a flagship program, consisting of round-tables, conferences, exhibitions and cultural events that highlight issues relating to the empowerment of women and the promotion of gender equality.

Click here for a description of all the events organised by the Division for Gender Equality of the Bureau of Strategic Planning.

A debate on “Gender Equality, Education and Training”, which took place over four weeks between 457 women and men from all corners of the globe, proved so successful, it is to be prolonged. the debate will continue until the High-level Event held by the United Nations General Assembly on the Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals in September 2010.

U.S. Scientist Wins L'OREAL-UNESCO Science Prize

Elaine Fuchs, Professor at the Laboratory of Cellular Biology of The Rockefeller University was awarded the prize “for the discovery of stem cells and key processes involved in skin development, maintenance and repair”. The prize, one of five awarded each year to outstanding women scientists, includes $100,000 for the recipient.

The Science Prizes and 15 international UNESCO-L’Oréal Fellowships were awarded last week at UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

According to Rockefeller University:

Dr. Fuchs received her B.S. in chemistry from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1972 and her Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1977 from Princeton University. She was a postdoc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1977 to 1980. Dr. Fuchs was the Amgen Professor of Basic Sciences at The University of Chicago before coming to Rockefeller in 2002. She was named the Rebecca C. Lancefield Professor the same year. She has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator since 1988.

Dr. Fuchs has received a number of honors and awards, including the Bering Award and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Award for Scientific Excellence in 2006, the Dickson Prize in Medicine in 2004, the Novartis/Drew Award in Biomedical Research in 2003, the Cartwright Award from Columbia University in 2002 and the Women in Cell Biology Senior Women’s Career Achievement Award in 1997. In 1994 Dr. Fuchs was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2005 and the NAS in 1995. She was named one of the Nation’s Outstanding Scientists by the White House in 1985 and holds honorary doctorates from the University of Illinois and the Mount Sinai and New York University Medical Schools.

Read Ambassador David Killion's blog posting on the awards!

Click here for a video of Dr. Fuchs discussing her life in science!

UNESCO launches Women Make the News 2010

On the occasion of International Women’s Day (8 March), UNESCO joins forces with international and regional media organizations to launch the annual Women Make the News (WMN) initiative. Under the theme “Towards Gender Sensitive Indicators for Media: Best Practices for Gender Perspective in Media and in Media Content”, WMN 2010 is intended to initiate a global exchange on the importance and the need for gender sensitive indicators for media organizations.

Read more!

UNESCO DG Irina Bokova at Women's Forum Global Meeting 09

Women Make the News

Launched annually on the occasion of International Women’s Day (8 March), Women Make the News is a global initiative aimed at promoting gender equality in the media.

This year the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), with support from UNESCO and Sweden’s LO-TCO Secretariat of International Trade Union Development Cooperation, has published a handbook entitled Getting the Balance Right.

Read more about this year's campaign!

International Women's Day 2009

Every year in March, UNESCO celebrates International Women’s Day (March 8) by hosting round-tables, conferences, exhibitions and cultural events that highlight issues relating to the empowerment of women and the promotion of gender equality.

Read more about this years celebration!

"Closing the gender gap"

SciDev.Net, the online magazine started by Science and Nature magazines which is devoted to science and technology in developing nations, has an interview with Prudence Mutowo, winner of a 2006 L'Oreal UNESCO fellowship. I quote:

Question: What has the L'Oreal UNESCO fellowship award meant to you, and have you found the experience valuable?

Answer: It has been absolutely brilliant. At the end of the first year [of my PhD] I needed to find funding to be able to continue. That is when I applied for the fellowship, which paid for my tuition fees.

But it's not just the money — the networking has been amazing. It introduces you to other award winners across the world. In day-to-day science you only really come across the people in your lab, and it is really quite difficult to make contacts.

At the Women in Science week that the L'Oreal Foundation runs annually in Paris, the Laureates — women who have made an impact in science — are available for you to go and ask questions. It helps especially that they are women, who may have had to make similar decisions to you. You can really use them as a reference point.

Read the full interview.

UNESCO reasserts its determination to promote women, especially in the fields of science and development

© Micheline Pelletier/Gamma
Pr. V. Narry Kim
L’OREAL-UNESCO Award Nominee

During the recent General Conference, UNESCO and Member States reasserted their determination to mainstream gender issues into all of the Organisation’s activities, while defining UNESCO’s priorities and strategy for the next biennium.

In the coming years, special emphasis will be placed on building capacities among women and young people through training programmes and programmes designed to increase awareness of and access to opportunities in science and technology, as well as improved training for university-level science educators.

• Women and Science
• Gender, Science and Technology
• Women, Science, Technology and Development network
• UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs Program
• UNESCO-L’ORÉAL Partnership "For Women in Science"

International Conference on Women's Leadership for Sustainable Development

Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf
addresses the Conference

Jerusalem and Haifa, Israel
18-22 November 2007

The conference, a biennial event held by the Golda Meir Mount Carmel International Training Center, was cosponsored by UNESCO and Mashav (the Foreign Ministry-operated official body for international cooperation).

UNESCO Deputy Director-General Prof. Marcio Barbosa expressed gratitude to the government of Israel for hosting such a major event and to the eminent women leaders who had participated with such great enthusiasm.

"Women in Science: The Missing Links"

"Women in Science: The Missing Links," The UNESCO Courier, 2007, Number 2. (PDF, 20 pages.)

This issue of UNESCO's major online magazine is devoted to the topic of women in science.

Argentina: the illusion of equality

In Argentina, one researcher out of two is female. But these numbers hide other inequalities. More

Budding Plant Research

Laureate for Africa of the 2007 L’ORÉAL-UNESCO Awards, Ameenah Gurib-Fakim has spent much of her life taking inventory of plants in her homeland, Mauritius. More

The trailing spouse syndrome

Women scientists, especially physicists, are likely to marry other scientists – which can create problems if both partners look for jobs at the same institution. More

“We need the best people as scientists” - Interview

Baroness Greenfield, Professor of pharmacology at Oxford University and author of a UK report on women in science, advocates stronger strategic approaches to addressing the issue of female under-representation in scientific careers. More

No statistics, no problem, no policy...

Myanmar has the world’s highest proportion of women researchers at 85%, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. But why are research hotspots like China and the United States missing from the list of 100 countries with available data? A careful look behind the statistics. More

"The UNESCO toolkit on Gender Indicators in Science, Engineering and Technology"

Gender Indicators in Science, Engineering and Technology
Sophia Huyer & Gunnar Westholm
UNESCO, 2007

The Toolkit is intended to provide a better understanding of the numbers and needs at stake in the participation of women in science and engineering, including quantitative and qualitative indicators for the participation of women and under-represented groups, especially in developing countries. It reviews the main theoretical and methodological approaches to data collection internationally and presents case studies, guidelines and new approaches related to the collection and analysis of gender-disaggregated data. In so doing, it establishes a new basis for evidence-based analysis enabling planners and policy-makers to address these issues with greater effectiveness.

Girls and science: a training module on motivating girls to embark on science and technology careers

Girls and science: a training module on motivating girls to embark on science and technology careers
UNESCO, 2006. (PDF, 936702 bytes)

The overall aim of this educational module is to help reduce gender disparities in the field of science and technology in Africa as well as to provide women with the possibility of embarking upon science careers in the quest of self-dependence and poverty reduction. Published by UNESCO, 2006, specific objectives of Girls and science: a training module on motivating girls to embark on science and technology careers include:

1. Promoting a positive image of women in scientific and technological careers;

2. Sensitizing parents, teachers, educators, school administrative staff, curriculum developers and trainers to counter gender stereotypes with regard to science careers;

3. Improving access of girls to scientific and technological education by providing clear ideas of career opportunities;

4. Providing teachers with the necessary career guidance tools to meet the needs of female learners seeking careers in science and technology.

Network: Women, Science, Technology and Development

The Network: Women, Science, Technology and Development was created by UNESCO in 2006. At present is links seven UNESCO Chairs, including:

* The Chairs “Water, women and decision-making” in Brazil, Côte d’Ivoire et Morocco
* The Chairs “Women, science and technology” in Argentina, Pakistan and Sudan
* The Chair “Women, science and technology for development in Africa” in Burkina Faso

The goal of this network of UNESCO Chairs is help Universities contribute to the increase of the number of women scientists and engineers as well as to the transfer of scientific and technological knowledge to the poorer populations of the globe. The university Chairs are run by women. They promote women in the fields of science and technology through research and teaching programs on gender in these fields and by training in the sustainable development management of resources (notably water) for women and teenage girls, principally in rural areas.

Women's participation in research

Gender Indicators in Science, Engineering and Technology: An Information Toolkit
By Sophia Huyer and Gunnar Westholm
UNESCO Publishing, 2007. 20.00 €
Click here if you want to purchase a copy.

Read Head counts and headaches measuring women in science,which summarizes a survey by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics of women's participation in research in 86 countries (A World of Science, April 2007, pages 21-23).

Read also the editorial on The Glass Ceiling by UNESCO's Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences (A World of Science, April 2007).

A meeting on the Empowerment of women in engineering and technology organized by WFEO in collaboration with UNESCO was held from 6 to 8 June. For details, contact the UNESCO focal point.

A World of Science (April - June 2007)

Read the new edition of UNESCO's A World of Science.

From the "In Focus" editorial:

Far from the nanohype

More than four billion dollars has been spent in recent years on a technology that remains largely hypothetical. ‘We stand on the threshold of a new era, that of nanofabrication, where systems and devices will be built in the laboratory atom by atom’, remarked Belita Koiller on accepting her L’ORÉAL–UNESCO for Women in Science award in 2005. As we do not yet know how to assemble atoms in practice, much of research and development (r&D) on nanotechnology remains theoretical, via computer modelling and the study of quantum theories. For all their exciting possibilities, nanomachines, nanorobots and the like still remain a promise of things to come for the most part.

Nanotechnology may still be work in progress but it is already raising some important ethical questions. it is also fueling an emotive debate between nanophiliacs and nanophobics. which of the public’s fears are justified and which are unfounded?

Next october, 192 countries will examine Nanotechnologies and Ethics: Policies
and Actions at UNesCo’s General Conference. Prepared by the world Commission
on the ethics of science and Technology (CoMesT) and UNesCo’s ethics of
science and Technology Programme after a wide consultation, the report will
outline strategies for regulating the development of nanotechnology around the
world to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks of this new technology,
far from the ‘nanohype’ which has taken hold of the debate.

From: "The glass ceiling

"A decade ago, UNESCO launched a program for Women, Science and Technology. Some might be tempted to consider such a program of secondary importance, in light of such momentous problems as extreme poverty, pandemics, climate change and so on. At a time when the planet is fighting for its survival, does UNESCO have nothing better to do than set up prizes and fellowships for women and promote science education for girls?

Let’s examine the situation for a moment. The latest data published by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, reproduced in this issue, reveal that science and technology are still dominated by men. Women represent just one-quarter of the world’s researchers, roughly 10% of university professors and fewer than 5% of members of Academies of Sciences. As for Nobel Prize laureates in science, fewer than 3% have been women.

It is true that the life sciences often attract more women than men but, even here, women soon strike a `glass ceiling´ when they try climbing the career ladder. ‘Our male colleagues do not readily accept women’, regrets Professor Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, one of this year’s five L’ORÉAL–UNESCO laureates. ‘For a woman to make it, her portfolio has to be ten times heavier than that of her male counterpart.’

International Women’s Day (8 March)

ABOUT INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

UNESCO is organizing an international conference entitled “Women Peacemakers” to celebrate International Women’s Day. This conference will bring together distinguished women whose work has contributed to the promotion of peace.

Eighty to 90% of the victims in today’s conflicts are civilians, and the vast majority of them are women and girls. Yet women do not participate fully in peacemaking processes, and when they do, their contribution is often overlooked.

Grand Duchess Maria Teresa of Luxembourg(pictured to the left), a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, will inaugurate the conference. Panelists will include Swanee Hunt(pictured to the right), former US Ambassador to Austria and founder of the Initiative for Inclusive Security.

A series of other events marking Women’s Day will take place at UNESCO from 28 February to 22 March.

Check out the UNIFEM website for International Womens Day!