{"id":8201,"date":"2020-11-13T16:51:22","date_gmt":"2020-11-13T16:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/?p=8201"},"modified":"2020-11-16T16:59:09","modified_gmt":"2020-11-16T16:59:09","slug":"diversity-and-inclusion-a-meta-look-at-ichep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/?p=8201","title":{"rendered":"\u201cDiversity and inclusion:\u201d a meta-look at ICHEP"},"content":{"rendered":"

Event: <\/strong>Diversity and Inclusion sessions at ICHEP 2020<\/p>\n

Reference: <\/strong>https:\/\/indico.cern.ch\/event\/868940\/sessions\/352786\/<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

This summer\u2019s ICHEP conference, officially held in Prague but this time actually on screens around the world, had two sessions devoted to diversity and inclusion in HEP. We\u2019d like to mention some highlights of the talks, trying to give an indicative look but certainly not exhaustive.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
from the USHEP COVID presentation<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Presentations were given by the four large LHC experiments, the Belle II experiment and Valencia\u2019s IFIC institute, five of which have dedicated \u201cdiversity offices.\u201d Their talks presented statistics, internal poll results and accounts of activities. There was also coverage of two initiatives, THE Port humanitarian hackathons and Particle Physics Masterclasses for Girls, a contribution from the LGBTQ community at CERN, and a study on the pandemic impact for the US HEP Advisory Panel.<\/p>\n

The main focus in terms of inclusion was gender, as the institutional presentations discussed a variety of statistics on the presence and role of women. In all of them the ratio of female members fell in the vicinity of 20% with an upward trend throughout the last decade. The statistics included details according to geographical regions and assigned responsibilities, which were in general corresponding to the overall ratio with some nuances. (One outlier that caught our eye was zero out of sixteen female speakers in the theory session of a regional meeting, which is compatible with our empirical estimation from other theory events.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
from the ATLAS presentation<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A few interesting points on gender inequality emerged from polls carried out by LHCb: out of the members who have dependents in their families (35% in total), 35% of women vs. 20% of men answered that this has made them decline a position of responsibility in the collaboration. At the same time, out of the members who used maternity or paternity leave, 41% of women vs. 0% of men found that their career took a step back after it.<\/p>\n

Family and gender along with race showed up as imbalanced factors also in a study in Brazil, presented in the US HEP pandemic study, where different groups were found to be affected to different extents by the lockdown. Indicatively, submitting papers while working remotely tended to go better the more white, male, and without kids the author was.<\/p>\n

Alongside numbers, the institutions talked about their inclusion activities, such as discussions and seminars, training for conveners, social media and real-world events on action dates. Tongue-in-cheek, it\u2019d probably be fair to count the ROOT logo upgrade among them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
from the LGBTQ CERN presentation<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Inclusion and discrimination based on sexual identity was underscored by the presentation by LGBTQ CERN. It highlighted the CERN Informal Network\u2019s not-all-rosy history and some public initiatives, like LGBTSTEM Day and IDAHOT. (It also included the catchy slogan \u201cWithout colors there\u2019s no strong interaction.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\n

Academia and research in large collaborations can be real ecosystems with their own issues, some of which \u2013 not traditionally present in the official discourse \u2013 seem to start emerging. These include being a newcomer, being geographically away from one\u2019s experiment, the role of institutional affiliation, as well as social isolation and mental health. At the least, these topics now appear in the agendas of the collaborations. Student issues seem to be especially targeted: the \u201cLHC Early Career Initiatives\u201d provide workshops and networking, while the LHCb experiment pioneers dedicated introductory meetings and the \u201cStarterkit\u201d courses. Of course this is not to say that issues are exclusive to the young, as demonstrated by LHCb\u2019s poll where the ratio of members who are dissatisfied with the work-life balance increases with seniority.<\/p>\n

To close these highlights with some thinking outside the box, the inclusion activities of Belle II can be mentioned, which among other extend to lobbying for vegetarian food options and color blind-friendly screens in the control room.<\/p>\n

\n

The data might still be sparse and some bias systematic, but these discussions showed a growing trend for tackling issues in the world of HEP.<\/p>\n

\n

All presentations can be found at: https:\/\/indico.cern.ch\/event\/868940\/sessions\/352786\/#all<\/a> <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Highlights from this summer\u2019s ICHEP conference and its sessions devoted to diversity and inclusion in HEP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8201"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8400,"href":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8201\/revisions\/8400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}