‘Give to gain’ with the Society’s medals and awards on International Women’s Day

Is there a simple but effective way of helping efforts to create a gender equal world?

We think there is…

Nominate a woman for one of our medals and awards.

Wales’ researchers and innovators, in the arts, humanities, sciences and medicine, are the drivers of Wales’ future well-being and success.

We can do so much more to recognise them and their work. That is especially the case for women researchers, especially in a world in which female academics can be less likely to win prizes than their male counterparts.

That’s why nominating a woman to receive one of our medals or awards can be so effective.

We have recently unveiled a revised line-up of medals and awards which promote and recognise the superb research and innovation that is carried out in Wales. They can be won by people, or teams, working within any field in academia, industry, the arts or public and charitable sectors, and at any stage of their career.

Anyone can put forward somebody’s name for a medal or award and this International Women’s Day (IWD) we urge you to do just that by nominating a woman who you think deserves the recognition. This year’s IWD theme of ‘Give to Gain’ highlights the range of actions we can take to contribute to women’s advancement and ‘[help] create a more supportive and interconnected world’.

Those actions range from mentoring to providing training, from advocacy to raising visibility.

“When it comes to raising visibility, our medals and awards are perfect,” said Helen Willson, the Society’s Head of Equity and Engagement.

“Using them to promote the work of women is a superb way of giving to gain. Giving a bit of time to nominate a woman colleague whose work you think should be acknowledged and celebrated is the perfect example of how we all thrive when women rise.”

Alongside our medals and awards, we also strive to ensure that our Fellowship reflects Wales’ diversity, both in terms of the nominations we receive each year and the overall percentage of our Fellows who are women.

This year International Women’s Day theme ‘Give to Gain’ highlights the power of reciprocity and support. One way our existing Fellows can ‘give to gain’ is to nominate someone for a LSW Fellowship. In recent years we have been working hard to encourage Fellows to prioritise nominations of women while also embedding EDI principles into the nomination process.

“In the Society’s earliest days, just 10% of our Fellows were women. That number has tripled and continues to rise which shows we are making progress in moving towards parity and a gender balanced Fellowship. But there is more work to do, including redoubling our efforts to ensure that our Society is one where all Fellows feel a sense of inclusion and belonging.” said Professor Rachel Ashworth FLSW, who chairs our Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Advisory Group.

To support this, we embed our EDI principles into the Fellows’ nomination process to make sure it as accessible as possible. That has included the following actions:

• a program of online an in-person sessions to a wide variety of audiences, some of them women-only, to offer tailored support and advice on the nomination process;
• transparency about the nomination process to ensure a completely level playing field: all our documentation is publicly available on our website;
• an ongoing and comprehensive review of our Fellows’ nomination process to make sure it is equitable and remove any barriers to entry that exist.

For further information about our commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion, please read our EDI statement, and find out more about the specific ways in which EDI is embedded into our medals and awards.