Minutes of the

IUPAP Working Group on Women in Physics Meeting

May 22^nd, 2005

Othon Palace, Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro

The meeting started at 9h30min at the room Leme. Working group (WGWIP) members present were: Aba Andam ( Ghana ), Marcia Barbosa ( Brazil), Anne Borg (Norway), Julie Corbett (UK), Martial Ducloy (France), Katharine Gebbie (USA), Beverly Hartline (USA), Sumathi Rao, Barbara Sandow (Germany) and Ling-an Wu (China). Yves Petroff, President of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) was invited to participate in this meeting.

The meeting started with a summary of the activities related to the organization of the Second IUPAP International Conference on Women in Physics that would take place in Rio de Janeiro from 23-25 May , 2005. Marcia clarified that most of the organization including invited speakers was done by herself and Elisa Baggio Saitovitch. The reason for concentrating the decisions between the two of them was the way the funds are given in Brazil, at the last minute. They were expecting around 150 people from about 45 countries to attend.

Next, Beverly Hartline reported to the WGWIP on the conference proceedings that she is organizing with funds provided by the US National Science Foundation. The deadlines are: June 15 for revisions to country papers, and June 30 for contributions from the invited speakers and discussion groups. She asked a group of young participants to help by transcribing the round table discussion. The volume will be probably out by December 2005. Each conference participant will receive a copy, IUPAP will receive 80 copies, and NSF has requested around 100 copies. Any country leader who provides a country paper will receive a copy, even if she is not able to attend.

Beverly read the financial report sent by Judy Franz, Secretary-General of IUPAP and IUPAP Liason of the WGWIP.

Anne Borg provided a summary about the Newsletter that circulated early this year. It was suggested that we should have another newsletter later this year. Katharine suggested that this new edition should contain articles from participants at the conference or country teams. Beverly gave the idea that the report could be about some positive initiative on gender issues that has been impelmented and that has yielded good results. Julie suggested that the WGWIP should hire a professional journalist to do the writing (though WGWIP does not have much money). Julie and Anne were chosen to be responsible for the next newsletter to be out in September.

Marcia asked to change the order of the agenda so the last item, the “Report for the General Assembly and future of the working group,” would be discussed before the remaining items.

The working group members agree that Marcia should ask the General Assembly (28-20 October in Cape Town, South Africa) to renew the working group but with a new charge namely:

• Identify and publicize good practices in terms of women in physics;

• Make sure IUPAP is following the resolution approved at the General Assemby in Berlin and also any new resolution approved at the general assembly in 2005.

Some specific activities that WGWIP should pursue include:

• Asking IUPAP to collect information on and report to the WGWIP the percentage of women among organizing committees, invited speakers, and participants at the conferences supported by IUPAP.

• Organizing a data bank containing name, institution, contact address, highest degree, year degree was received , email and field of research so we could have an idea about women in physics in different countries. This data bank should be linked through our homepage.

Next, Marcia made a report on the proposed African network on women in physics. Some progress has been made:

• There is a discussion list posted at african-women@if.ufrgs.br with 50 women from Africa listed.

• The WGWIP webpage has a new link with basic information about 38 women in Africa.

• A preliminary planning meeting will be held on 23^rd May at the end of the first day of the Second IUPAP International Conference on Women in Physics.

It was suggested that a meeting of a few female physicists from the four regions from Africa would meet before the World Conference on Physics and Sustainable Development. This event will take place in Durban, South Africa, from October 31^st to November 2^nd . Aba and Marcia were in charge of contacting the women from Africa. Beverly and Katharine were invited to be at the meeting of the African Network during Monday dinner.

At the end of the meeting, Marcia reported on the Travel Grants. This is the fourth cycle of the travel grant program. This time we had 25 grantees supported by funding from IUPAP ( U$ 5000.00), UNESCO (U$ 7000.00) and L'Oreal (8000.00). We decided to raise funds for having a fifth grant cycle next year. Some changes were suggested:

• The WGWIP with the support of IUPAP will negotiate with the organizing committees of the conferences/schools that have grantee participants to have the registration fee waived for such participants.

• The dead line for grant applications will be February 28^th, desicions will be made in March for events taking place from May.

• The criteria for giving the grants will be publicized on the webpage, namely:

1. The impact the conference will make in her career;

2. Early career people will be preferred

3. Participants presenting a paper, talk or poster will be preferred (not applicable if the event is a School)

• The WGWIP will try to renew the support from UNESCO and L'Oreal and will look for new funds at IBM (Beverly Hartline), ??? (Martial Ducloy), Schlumberger ( Julie ?), ICTP ( Sumathi - using the fact that we have receive applications for people that want to participate at conferences at ICTP and people from ICTP requesting support), Third World Academy (Aba). In summary, all of us should look for new funding sources. For this we will send out letters for fund raising