Flinders Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Robert Saint joined Flinders’ STEM Women Branching Out group, staff and students as 128 turned out to smash the Australian lab coats in one place record for International Women’s Day.
The record breaking effort is one of a series of events that includes a special women’s business breakfast at Tonsley this morning and an exclusive screening of the movie ‘Hidden Figures’ in the CBD later this evening.
The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is #BeBoldForChange, with events happening globally to “help forge a better working world – a more inclusive, gender equal world”.
Flinders staff and academics showed their support of those aims and were in celebratory form as they broke the Australian record this morning.
Professor Saint spoke to the group, commenting that he was enjoying being back in a lab coat for the morning and thanking them for supporting the aims of International Women’s Day, before Flinders’ Associate Professor Karen Burke da Silva confirmed the national record had been broken.
Flinders’ STEM women Branching Out group runs a series of activities at Flinders to support women in science, including Science 50:50.
The University also supports the Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) pilot project which aims to promote and retain more women in senior STEMM positions.
The SAGE pilot is introducing the principles of the UK-based Athena SWAN charter to promote equity and inclusion through an evaluation and accreditation framework to identify and address gender inequity in science and research organisations.
Find out more about International Women’s Day here.