Dear members of the ICIAM Board,
The ICIAM Officers need your feedback on an important issue concerning a possible commitment that ICIAM could take concerning Gender Equality in Science and which, due to the postponement of our May Board meeting until September, cannot wait until then. You can send your vote on this issue by going to the webpage
https://forms.gle/LD3Zj7vqSJERLFHe7
(if you have any problem accessing this Google form, you can vote YES or NOT to ICIAM becoming member of this project by sending an email message to secretary@iciam.org)
The issue is the following: various members of the International Science Council, among them, ICIAM and the IMU, which participated in the 'Gender Gap in Science’ project, would like to maintain some kind of coordination
among them in order to continue collaborating in gender equality issues and they would like to sign
a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) defining the general terms of their collaboration.
The aim of this project is to set up a permanent Standing Committee for Gender Equality in STEM* (SCGE-STEM)
that will facilitate communication and cooperation among the signatory partners in future projects
and initiatives to promote gender equality. Signatories are NOT asked to make any advance commitment
to fund all or any of the projects that might be proposed in the future, but rather, commit to keep one another
informed of all the new projects and initiatives so that all partners may decide whether they want to take part in them.
The Standing Committee will be composed and run by one member from each signatory organization.
As you can read in the attached draft text for the MOU, the financial commitment would consist of
300 Euros per year that would be mainly used to set-up and maintain a website + the cost of the ICIAM representative in the SCGE-STEM Standing Committee, that depending on the location of the meeting, could amount to around 1000 Euros per year.
You can see the details of the project in the attached draft for the MOU.
Thank you for your participation in this unusual online vote, but we live in unusual circumstances at the moment...
Best regards, Ya-xiang Yuan, ICIAM President