Let’s celebrate the 4th international Polar Pride Day!
November 18th marks the fourth official International Polar Pride Day: A wonderful opportunity to celebrate the colourful diversity of the Polar community together with many others around the globe and thus raising the awareness of the importance of the inclusion of our LGBTQIA+ colleagues. Furthermore, this date shall also remind us that discrimination in different forms against certain groups still exists.
The SCAR Action Group on equality, diversity, and inclusion (SCAR EDI AG) is therefore committed to identifying and endorsing best practices and inclusive behaviours across SCAR and its networks in order to guarantee a welcome and peaceful working environment for everybody.
Since the last Polar Pride Day a lot of goals have already been achieved:
- An EDI Statement was released by SCAR
- A SCAR Code of Conduct was developed and a reporting tool for harassment will be embedded on the SCAR website shortly.
- An analysis of the SCAR community’s demographics was done and will be utilised to find areas where SCAR can continue to improve their EDI efforts
- Important information about the SCAR recognition structure was translated from English into multiple languages and the nomination processes are now being overhauled as well
- Various outreach activities (e.g. webinars, trainings, meet-ups) have been organised
While these activities already show good progress towards an inclusive SCAR environment, there are still many tasks that must be tackled in the future. Primarily, more effort has to be done to foster awareness about the importance of a diverse research community. Therefore, the AG plans more outreach activities such as social media posts, webinars, and several in-person events to take place during the SCAR Open Science Conference (OSC) in 2024. Furthermore, new EDI training workshops held alongside APECS are scheduled for later this year. In the coming year, we hope to continue our analysis of SCAR demographics, and work to update the existing demographic survey for SCAR OSC 2024. SCAR recognises that not all of its members can be ‘out and proud’ in their workplace or in their home regions, and the SCAR EDI AG acknowledges that these silent members still have important issues to share and overcome.
The SCAR EDI AG is encouraged to see the growing interest in EDI issues within the polar world and is proud to celebrate this meaningful Polar Pride Day with all of you.