The Directors of the Raine Study along with the Operations Management Committee have agreed to support The University of Western Australia’s (UWA) commitment to the new Panel Pledge for Gender Equity.
The Panel Pledge is a commitment made by any speaker requested to participate in a panel or forum, to ask the organiser about the gender balance of the program and highlight their commitment to diversity. It involves actively encouraging women voices in our industry and persevering to achieve change. We will apply it as the standard for consideration for all scientific events we organise and participate in.
With this Panel Pledge, we commit to:
- Openly calling for gender equity on panels, at conferences and other professional events.
- Actively supporting women’s voices and championing diversity more broadly.
- Ensuring that all forums that the University is involved in both within and beyond UWA take equal gender representation and other facets of diversity into account so that equity of voice is achieved.
- Ensuring that all forums organised by UWA take the gender of speakers and panellists into account and uniform gender panels are not hosted.
- Enquiring about the gender composition of the panellists/speakers and how the organisers are working towards both men and women being represented.
- Reserving the right to withdraw from events should diversity of speakers not be achieved.
- Recognising where gender representation is not achieved at an event, and if a UWA employee is speaking they reserve the right to:
- mention that improved diversity in the speaker mix was requested, and
- highlight relevant women leaders in the field and potential speakers in the presentation.
UWA is the central agent of the Unincorporated Joint Venture through which the Raine Study operates. The Raine Study’s offices and digital resources are hosted on the UWA campus. Other partners of the Raine Study to support the Panel Pledge include Curtin University (UJV Board Member) and the University of Newcastle (Institutional Partner).
Find out more about the Champions of Change Coalition behind the Panel Pledge here.