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STEM women, rise up!

18 April 2018

Last Friday, April 13 was the closing session of the Columbus U-Benchmarking Club: "Enhancing Women's Participation in STEM Programs". With the support of UNESCO, this Benchmarking Club program brought together 17 Ibero-American universities, most of them Columbus members, to share good practices in university policies and strategies to promote and improve access, recruitment and retention of women in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) programs.

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During the development of the Benchmarking Club, participating universities identified and shared good practices around policies, strategies and mechanisms, within their institutions, around 4 key axes:

• Attraction of women to STEM programs (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)

• Recruitment and admission of women to STEM programs

• Retention and empowerment of talent during STEM training: teaching of Science and Technology.

• Promotion of the scientific-technological career in women.

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The closing session was attended by Ernesto Fernandez Polcuch, Head of the Scientific Policies and Partnerships Section of the Division of Scientific Policies and Capacity Building of UNESCO, who congratulated all the participating universities for their work and encouraged them to continue on this path to obtain more visible results in this matter.

 

The program culminated with the presentation of the improvement plans of the universities, which in turn undertook to join forces in a community of practices in which they can share the evolution of this topic in their universities and the results of the improvement plans, created in the framework of the Benchmarking.