From 1-2 December 2017, the regional workshop in Africa for the project ‘A Global Approach to the Gender Gap in Mathematical and Natural Sciences: How to Measure It, How to Reduce It?’ was hosted at AIMS South Africa.
Gender equality and inclusion is of vital importance to the work of AIMS, where 30% of all graduates are women. AIMS believes that women can and will play a key role in the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) if they are given equal access to a quality education in the STEM fields; women constitute half of Africa’s brain capacity.
The objective of the workshop was to raise awareness about the project, connect with the people who are instrumental for the project and get input to make the project relevant to local realities.
The workshop was organised by Igle Gledhill, Dr. Igle Gledhill is a principal researcher at the CSIR Aeronautic Systems research group, and Prof. Marie Francoise Ouedraogo, Assistant Professor at the Department of Mathematics of University of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The 42 participants were people working in the various parts of Africa that were nominated by the unions and organization that are members of the project.