April 2017

We were presenting a poster at the equal opportunity session of the general assembly of the EGU, in Vienna! For those who don’t know, the general assembly of the EGU is one of the biggest meeting for geoscientists worldwide: this year, 14,496 scientists from 107 countries attended this gathering. That was a good opportunity to talk about science, but also about how to improve the academic environment, to make it more inclusive of all people. That’s what the equal opportunity session was all about.

This year, we decided to share our experience in a graphic way. Alice Adenis, who is a PhD student in the geoscience laboratory of Lyon, happens to be also a very talented cartoonist, and she accepted the challenge of putting our stories of everyday sexism into comics. The drawings we presented at the conference resonated with a variety of women and men, and we received encouragement from many people, especially from Claudia Alves de Jesus Rydin and Veronique Garçon (thank you!). This motivated us to transform this short-term project into something more lasting.

And here we are, launching the Did this really happen? platform!

For those of you who are interested, you can download the poster here: TeamPoster_EGU2017_light.