Gender disparities rooted in bias continue to hold women career scientists back, according to the latest UNESCO data from 2021. That study found that while women represent a third of all researchers, they only account for 12 per cent of national science academy members, continue to receive smaller research grants compared with their male colleagues and their work remains underrepresented in high-profile journals.

The second event anchoring the week is a panel discussion on the topic ‘Diversity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Academia’ on 11 March 2022. Hosted together with the Singapore Women in Science (SgWIS), panellists will discuss the challenges and the opportunities facing academia in engaging women and underrepresented groups in breaking into the entrepreneurship space to advance innovations.

Throughout the week, WinS is also sponsoring at-home movie viewing gatherings, featuring the movie ‘Picture a Scientist’ that will enable the whole community to collectively confront the common held stereotypes of what a scientist looks like, and what stereotypes prevail, when that scientist is a woman.

This year’s events are built on WinS’ strong track record of putting on diverse initiatives to support women scientists and clinician-scientists across the AMC. This includes a partnership with non-profit organisation KeyNote Women, which is committed to bring diversity to speaking stages across the world. Together with WinS, KeyNote Women introduced a series of high profile female speakers to inspire their most recent 2021 WinS Leadership Programme cohort.  

 
Career advancement programme to cultivate future leaders

Following the success of the WinS Leadership Programme, which is aimed at motivating early to mid career faculty and clinician scientists, the WinS-Career Advancement Programme (CAP) was launched under WinS-RSI with the mission to advance and develop the careers of female research scientists across the AMC at all professional and training levels.

“The WinS-CAP is designed to address some of the unique challenges faced by early career woman scientists. With in-depth training workshops and faculty-peer mentor sessions, participants will emerge with greater self-awareness and other tangible skills needed to deftly navigate their career advancement with stronger purpose and confidence,” said Asst Prof Chacko.

After the successful graduation of the inaugural cohort, which comprised twenty ‘early career’ female scientists across the AMC in October 2020, WinS-RSI organised the second run of WinS-CAP in collaboration with Roffey Park Institute. In July 2021, the programme accepted twenty talented early career PhD women scientists across Duke-NUS and SingHealth.