International Women’s Day 2020, celebrated on 8 March, is rallying the efforts of gender champions around the world under the theme, ‘An equal world is an enabled world.’
The IAEA is taking concrete action to include gender-related considerations in the design and implementation of its technical cooperation (TC) programme.
Over the past twelve months, the programme has supported the launch of new women’s health initiatives, increased engagement with young girls at the secondary education level and continued efforts to ensure that female experts and trainees benefit equally from the TC programme.
- Reflecting their shared commitment to increasing access to cancer care, particularly for women in developing countries, the IAEA and the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) announced a new partnership to mobilize resources and implement projects to tackle women’s cancers.
- In July, a new radiotherapy centre in Tajikistan’s Sughd province was inaugurated and officially opened to the public, with IAEA support, expanding access to cancer treatment for those living in the country’s mountainous northern provinces and easing the burden placed on healthcare workers in the capital. Since then, TC support has focused on the design and development of a Women’s Cancer Diagnostic and Treatment Centre, which is expected to be housed within the existing RCCO facility in Dushanbe.
To ensure that the IAEA and national technical institutions benefit from the contribution of qualified female professionals, the technical cooperation programme is encouraging young girls to engage with nuclear science at secondary and tertiary school levels.
- For the second consecutive year, the IAEA worked closely with counterparts within the Permanent Mission of the United Arab Emirates to support the latter’s national ‘Nuclear Science for Development’ student competition. Following a months-long selection process conducted by Emirati and IAEA experts, six winners were recognized—all of them female pupils from the Al-Heera and the Al-Hudaibah Secondary Schools—and invited to tour the Agency’s facilities, including the IAEA Seibersdorf laboratories.
- To remain sustainable across decades of operation, institutions which leverage nuclear technologies rely on the availability of young, technically-skilled and motivated professionals. As part of an ongoing project, the Agency has organized a series of workshops, entitled ‘Future Nuclear Leaders in Latin America and the Caribbean,’ to identify, support and empower young professionals in the field. The most recently organized iteration of these workshops, held in Havana, Cuba, placed a special emphasis on encouraging young, female professionals to act as ‘nuclear advocates’ in their respective national institutions.
- In Ghana, despite consistent efforts to reverse this trend, only 28% of students studying science at the secondary school level are girls. At a side-event held on the margins of an IAEA Ministerial Conference, Ghana’s Deputy Minister for Science and Technology, Patricia Appiagyei described how her government is working to promote female participation in science and technology education and research.
- Last year, more than 450 experts and country representatives attended the IAEA’s Symposium on Nuclear Applications in Bogotá, during which a high-level panel was convened to explore how best to promote female participation in the nuclear industry. Organized in cooperation with the Colombian Ministry of Mines and Energy and the Colombian Geological Survey, the event ensured that gender mainstreaming remained a priority for industry decision-makers in the region and provided a valuable opportunity to add new, female voices to discussions about the future of nuclear technology in Latin America and the Caribbean.
For more information about the IAEA’s gender mainstreaming efforts, visit the dedicated page.
