The UN SDGs’ Decade of Action necessitates transformational thinking, for our people and planet. While many have united in principle behind this declaration of intent to strive for prosperity based on peace, stability, inclusion, and partnerships, implementation and action in this regard have been lacking, and global business and governmental thinking remains stagnant. Gender inequality remains a significant barrier to sustainable development: our world’s human resources are catastrophically stymied, given our collective nations’ failure to unlock the full transformative contribution of women and girls - half the population. Creative, integrated solutions are essential, and the Royal Academy of Science International Trust’s Women and its Girls in Science initiatives, operating at the nexus of science and society, are well placed to provide key insights and a roadmap forward.
RASIT’s inaugural 2020 publication, #February11: Women & Girls in Science for Socio-Economic Sustainable Development, is the first in an annual series, focusing on the challenge and importance of centring women and girls in science in the drive to achieve each of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Through tracking both the successes and roadblocks, pushing policy shifts, and proposing bold and scalable solutions, RASIT’s selected authors seek to further catalyse the Decade of Action to quash inequalities and attain sustainable development, which remain ethical, political and economic imperatives as we face our world’s grave ecological and humanitarian challenges. Capturing the voices, experiences, thoughts, and opinions of a diverse range of prominent innovators, policymakers, activists, and scholars (children and teens, as well as adults), #February11 interrogates where and why progress in attaining the SDGs has met resistance and been slowed, in developed, as well as developing countries.
Exploring the multifaceted human challenges contained within the 2030 Agenda, and critically examining the widening shortfall in female leadership and participation in scientific and technological innovation, this volume asserts that we must radically reframe the current policy approaches that have dominated the discourse on equality thus far, and that the required path forward for human dignity and progress must start with the full and effective inclusion, participation, and equal opportunities for women at every level of decision making in political, economic, and public life, for on this basis only can we realise bold integrated frameworks comprising grassroot changes, linked action, and scalable ‘glocal’ solutions, in order to meet our 21st century challenges.
This volume is a rallying call for accountability and legislation to ensure equity and parity in science partnerships with the private sector to align with the SDGs, address the gender-pay-gap, and better coordinate networking and advocacy radical cultural changes needed to remove discrimination and bias in all forms in science, academia, and society, especially considering that science is historically the driver of profound social change addressing the intersections of gender inequality with race and social class and the need for students to be exposed to successful role models in science and leadership.
Providing evidence to show that investing in women and girls in science would provide inclusive economic growth, and of the urgent requirement that we mobilise the world’s resources to this end, the authors make clear that technology and finance will remain the key drivers of our near future, and we will not succeed in meeting our global challenges without women and girls being active and integrated within these fields.