ICWIP - Final day report and conference resolutions

Apologies for not reporting on the final day of the conference before now. I'm going to use the excuses of the excellent conference organised tours, my travelling home and then jetlag!

Friday rounded the conference off with a couple of presentations - success stories from women physicists from South Africa and Vietnam. The chairs of the various workshop strands reported back, and their conclusions and recommendations were all distilled down to a set of resolutions to be presented at the 26th General Assembly of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics in Tsukuba, Japan.

I've copied the resolutions below:

The representatives assembled in Seoul unanimously recommend the following actions to the IUPAP 26th General Assembly in Tsukuba, Japan:

1. Promote through the IUPAP Liaison Committees and physical societies the formation of additional regional or national working groups for women in physics. These working groups would assist worldwide in the efforts to increase the participation of women, while being a resource to attract, retain, and advance women in physics.

2. Publicize site visits as an effective tool for improving the "climate" of physics workplaces, and encourage their implementation to help the workplaces become more supportive of both women and men. For a site visit, an institution or physics department invites a team of physicists to assess the work environment for women and to give advice for improvements in gender equity.

3. Actively encourage organizers of IUPAP-sponsored conferences to provide, associated with the conference programme (a) professional development workshops for attendees and (b) outreach activities aimed at the public and to engage both girls and boys from an early age in the excitement of physics.

4. Charge the IUPAP Working Group on Women in Physics (a) to oversee the administration of a global survey of physicists in 2009, (b) to continue to assess the progress of women in physics, (c) to make useful resources available globally through the internet, (d) to organize the 4th International Conference on Women in Physics in 2011, and (e) to report at the 27th IUPAP General Assembly in 2011.

5. Urge IUPAP Liaison Committees and physical societies to take the leadership in their countries to encourage broad participation of their members in the global survey of physicists.

 In total, there were 283 attendees at the conference, from 57 countries. And, from a very unscientific straw poll of the UK delegation, it seems unanimous that everyone really enjoyed their time at the conference. I know that I've been feeling more energised and enthusiastic about my job since getting back (though that enthusiasm is wilting somewhat in the face of the huge pile of emails I've had to sort through).

I'll be keeping this blog going, as there are several things that I spotted over the conference that I'd like to blog about. I've also got shedloads more photos to show off too! So, even though the conference is over, this won't be the last you've heard from me! Or, I've no doubt, the last of my involvement with the whole issue of women in physics.