Abstract book

Are we really addressing the gender issue in physics?

Morgane König

"Simply the best? - On the relevance of social positions

and normative assumptions in academic careers"

Palua-Irene Villa-Braslavsky

[Cancelled -- slides will be made available soon]

Science is considered to be pure meritocracy: inclusion and promotion, knowledge and scientific practices should rely merely on excellence, experience, achievement, potential. However, as much research shows, this is only partly the case: Academia is actually also driven and sustained by massive cultural assumptions and naturalized social experiences, by biases and prejudices as well as structural inequality. My talk will present core findings on this twofold structure of academia - meritocracy and its failures - and will critically discuss previous attempts at solving the problem of unjust exclusion. I will conclude by arguing that ‚fixing the women‘ or ‚fixing the minorities‘ is a problematic approach, and that we instead need to 'fix the system‘ in order to make science not only more inclusive, but also better.