Increasing Gender Diversity and Inclusion in Scientific Committees and Related Activities at STScI

TL;DR

This paper describes a new initiative at STScI to improve gender diversity and inclusion in scientific committees through guidelines, metrics, and training, aiming to foster diverse scientific outcomes.

Contribution

Introduction of a structured framework with guidelines, metrics, and training to enhance gender diversity and inclusion in scientific committees at STScI.

Findings

Implementation of gender representation goals

Development of tracking metrics and tools

Expected increase in diversity and scientific progress

Abstract

We present a new initiative by the Women in Astronomy Forum at Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) to increase gender diversity and inclusion in STScI's scientific committees and the activities they generate. This initiative offers new and uniform guidelines on binary gender representation goals for each committee and recommendations on how to achieve them in a homogeneous way, as well as metrics and tools to track progress towards defined goals. While the new guidelines presented in the paper focus on binary gender representation, they can be adapted and implemented to support all minority groups. By creating diverse committees and making them aware of, and trained on implicit bias, we expect to create a diverse outcome in the activities they generate, which, in turn, will advance science further and faster.