Science Summit at United Nations General Assembly 77 (UNGA77)

REGISTRATION to attend the physical event in New York available by filling in the registration form above

Facilitators:
Lynne Corner, Director of Voice
Yael Weinstock-Shemesh, Weinstock Consulting Corp., Amazing Community Board of Advisors
FannyKrivoy, Founder, Studio Analogous
Paola Barrio Sanchez, Amazing Community Board of Advisors
Nic Palmarini, UK National Innovation Centre for Ageing

Background:
References to anti-ageing remedies targeting women to improve wrinkles, mask grey hair and soften skin have existed for millennia. The anti-ageing industry has constructed the older woman as a person at risk who must treat and prevent any old age markers to avoid being a victim.
However, the effect of this stereotypical vision of women’s appearance is far more significant, dangerous, and societally impactful than simply “looking good” to accomplish today's Instagram culture guidelines. This workshop, led by an organisation focused on sustaining and supporting women's return to work in later life, aims to highlight the opportunities and risks associated with longevity and the needs both for self-fulfilment and self-sustainability along the life course.
Abstract:
Femininity is susceptible to multiple marginalisations, including ageism, sexism, lookism (appearance), sizeism, fitnessism, healthism and sexual objectification. Ironically, older women's vulnerability due to these layered forms of prejudice translates into a duality of being simultaneously hyper-visible and invisible. Hyper-visibility results from the exaggerated focus on the appearance promoted and enabled in media by the anti-ageing industry and those who have been influenced by it. It is also fostered by the rhetoric of successful ageing, which posits that ageing successfully essentially translates into not ageing and objectively looking younger provides a shield against appearance-based age-shaming.
The intersection of ageism and sexism is not limited to appearance, and there are many profound consequences to the disadvantaged position of older women. Briefly, some contributing factors of intersectional discrimination are life-long pay wage differences contributing to increased poverty, increased risk of abuse and violence in later life, loss of relationships/life partners, and workplace harassment and discrimination. These are exacerbated further for oppressed women of colour because of their racial identity and a lifetime of structural forces that contribute to inequality in later life. The effects of ageism, racism, and sexism combined exponentially increase the risk for housing instability, food insecurity and lack of access to healthcare.

With Climate Change on our doorstep, we realize that the survival of humanity will depend among others on our ability to understand the basic principles of ecology and to develop and practice an economic system according to these principles. The Paris Agreement on Climate Change calls all of us for an urgent progress in science, business and in developing policies.

Also, two of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) namely Goal 5: Achieve Gender Equality and Empower all Women and Girls and Goal 4: Quality Education, together contribute to forest progress in the subject of education, gender, and inequality. We need a diversity of professionals in the field of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) at all levels of education, from High School to Academia (Capra, 2012 and Sachs, 2017). Women in the scientific workforce add valuable development, creativity, innovation to the urgent questions we need to deal with (Charlesworth & Banaji, 2019).

This paper is framed by the field of Ecological Economics (EE), and we will discuss some aspects of it, mainly regarding the status and the reasons behind the underrepresentation of women in EE in Europe
Over the past decades trends of representation of women in the workforce have changed in Europe. In some work fields, women have made a lot of progress in recognition, publication, equitable pay and representation. Despite the overall change, disparities in the STEM field are well known. Economic science is now increasingly considered as a STEM discipline.

This paper looks at the state of the art on how women are represented in the field of Economics and Ecological Economics (EE) in Europe today and provide some historical background for this reality. Discussing some of the reasons for the misrepresentation of women in STEM and women in economics with male and female economists in the field of EE can shed some light on the social and structural barriers. These barriers seem to be related to the male-dominated history of economists, pure discrimination patterns in society, social stereotypes that start very early in education institutions, lack of supplied information about the possible work fields, equal salary, family-related barriers like maternity leave and more.

There is an agreement about the need for women in the STEM workforce, but how does this is trickle down to governments and institutions? Where do we find the agreement so needed that there is work being done to close the gaps of inequality concerning the representation of women in STEM? What are the policies in European countries? Is there enough “noise” being created to improve this situation? Do governments work actively to help women get ahead and get their voices heard?

Economics science is now increasingly considered as a STEM discipline (tbs news, Khan 2021 ). One of our first findings is that few publications are about women in STEM focusing on Economics. Moreover, only few papers are published on the issue of women in ecological economics. This is the moto for our essay

Agenda
2 pm: welcome note and introduction
2:10 pm: presentation of the Doctoral Programme of the ICS Lisbon University, Portugal
2:20 pm: results of the study on Women in STEM with a focus on Ecological Economics (EE) in Europe
2:30 pm: examples of two Non-Governmental Organisations acting towards SDG 5 Gender Equality in STEM
2:45 pm: Round table with professors in Economics around the World: “Analysis of gap and initiatives: a round table on representativity of women in STEM with focus on EE”
3:40 pm: wrap-up and Q&A
3:50 pm: conclusions and recommendations for the next UN Science Summit 2023