NERCOUTE Future Females Leaders of Geoscience

Women and nonbinary scientists are underrepresented in leadership positions in geoscience both in the UK and internationally. The Geological Society of London (GSL)- the UK’s professional geoscience accrediting body- has had only three female presidents in its 218 year history. Women and nonbinary scientists are underrepresented as top journal editors, as keynote presenters, session chairs,and prize winners across geoscience. Yet, in part due to initiatives like ‘Girls into Geoscience’ the women and nonbinary students account for nearly 50% of undergraduate geoscience students. Therefore the leaders in geoscience do not represent their community. We need to address the gender disparity in geoscience leadership roles through identifying key barriers, and establishing a trial training camp to empower the future female and nonbinary leaders of geoscience. We will identify barriers to inclusions and leadership for female and non-binary geoscientists by surveying women in geoscience and reviewing existing literature on inclusion and leadership in geosciences. We will use this information to both critique current leadership expectations, that make these roles favour male geoscientists, but also to identify key skills we can train future leaders in, to empower them to take up leadership roles in the future. Then, we will empower a first cohort of female and nonbinary future leaders in geosciences through developing a novel field and leadership training experience for female and nonbinary masters and PhD students. Finally, we will learn from this immersive training camp to assess how approaches like this can empower future leaders and how we can contribute learnings from this project to the wider community and those currently in leadership positions. To address this aim, we will undertake qualitative and reflective evaluation of the immersive training camp to establish the effectiveness of the programme in empowering the first cohort of future female and nonbinary geoscientists. As a result of this work, we will create a network of geoscientists, science communicators, leadership experts and EDI experts. This network will share the outcomes of this work with both the GSL, and with the wider geoscience community through conference presentations and collaboration with international organisations. Increasing the diversity of leaders within geosciences is not just the right thing to do to ensure that those in positions of power reflect the communities they represent, but it is also beneficial for society in general. The world is facing many challenges, with geoscience at the heart of many of these solutions. By increasing diversity in leadership of geosciences we will have access to greater innovation, facilitating the spread of novel ideas otherwise unavailable to us to address these societal challenges.