Our Centre for Advanced Instrumentation recently hosted an event dedicated to celebrating and supporting women in STEM. Speakers from across the globe came to Durham to share inspirational stories from their impressive careers, showing how they came to be where they are today.
Held on 20 September, 'ESTRELLAS: Women in Tech & Sciences' emphasised that through looking at our own, and other people's journeys, we can learn from them and make a positive impact on the future. In Spanish 'ESTRELLAS' means stars and 'ELLAS' means the female plural form of the pronoun 'they'.
Journeys, opportunities, celebration, and working together
Sessions focused on important topics such as identifying opportunities for women in technology and sciences, as well as a panel discussion on working together towards gender equality and actions that could be taken.
By openly sharing challenges they faced during their careers, the speakers from a range of backgrounds opened a platform to look at how these can be addressed.
ESTRELLAS also dedicated a session to acknowledge all the women in roles that support academic research, sharing that they are highly important for the development and success of all projects.
This included managers, Professional Support Services (PSS) colleagues, technical support, Science Engagement Impact Acceleration Accounts (IAA), business, marketing, pre-award, post-award and project support administrators.
Nurturing each other and improving the future
The team behind ESTRELLAS encourage focusing on supporting one another, treating everyone with respect, recognising contributions from everyone involved, providing positive feedback and creating a healthy work environment.
