The International Day of Women and Girls in Science, celebrated on 11 February, is implemented by UNESCO and UN-Women, in collaboration to institutions and civil society partners that aim to promote women and girls in science. With this aim in mind, the COST Action Making Young Researchers’ Voices Heard for Gender Equality (VOICES) was born.
Over the last decades, European higher education and research systems have been characterised by deep changes, due to globalisation and marketisation, that have dramatically transformed research careers. While doctoral and postdoctoral researchers constitute a fast-growing workforce, their working conditions have become increasingly precarious and their career prospects uncertain. Those processes tend to exacerbate and create new forms of gendered inequalities for young researchers and women that have been magnified by the COVID-19 crisis. Inequalities are also reinforced by disparities within academia linked to other social determinants, such as origin, socioeconomic status, sexuality, or ability.
Therefore, VOICES is a COST Action that aims to increase the visibility of inequalities faced by Young Researchers and Innovators (YRIs) from a gender perspective.
Anne-Sophie Godfroy, VOICES Chair, explains the reasons why promoting young women researchers is important:
“First because young researchers are the future of research. Without them, there is no research. Why women? A diverse and creative community will produce a diverse and creative research.”
VOICES is a collaborative network of researchers from 32 countries that aims to create a community of gender equality practitioners composed of various stakeholders (YRIs, independent researchers, academic managers, organisations). The Action also wants to give specific attention to displaced scholars and scholars at risk.
“VOICES offers a community to share concerns, ideas, and to promote a better inclusion of young researchers at all levels of the decision process, to make the challenges they face visible”. Besides, “at personal level, young researchers can make their research known and promote their career”.
Sophie Godfroy
The main goal of this Action is thus to promote a sustainable dialogue between young researchers and stakeholders in the research ecosystem at the systemic level (European & national policymakers) and at the institutional level (senior researchers, academic managers).
On 14 and 15 February 2023, the network is therefore holding its annual meeting in Malta on ‘Voicing young researchers for the future of Europe: Trends, challenges and policies‘, where young researchers will hear about the problems they face in their scientific careers and discuss possible solutions to address them in working groups. Follow the discussion on Twitter.
Additional information
Conference ‘Voicing young researchers for the future of Europe: Trends, challenges and policies; programme and agenda