Quota for male participants

For many years it has been tradition at the Physikerinnentagung that scientific presentations have been reserved for women, whereas contributions on sociopolitical topics presented by both female and male speakers have been welcome. Also as participants without contributions men have always been welcome to discuss the role of women in physics with us. There are a lot of issues like e.g. work-life-balance or dual-career-couples that can only be discussed effectively in a mutual exchange between men and women.

Since 2011, the Physikerinnentagung is open to talks by male speakers on physics research. However, the number of talks is subject to a quota. The percentage is equal to the percentage of invited talks presented by women at the Frühjahrstagung of the DPG in the same year.
With this regulation several goals are pursued:

• The quota highlights the small number of women among physicists.
• Those men interested in the sociopolitical discussions of the conference have the opportunity to present their field of research as well.
• The conference stays dominated by women in order to maintain the agenda of building a network among female physicists.
• The quota makes it perceivable how underrepresented women are in physics by giving men the opportunity to experience this from their own perspective.

This year, the quota for scientific contributions given by men is 12%. A mere participation - without a talk or poster - by men beyond the 12% is possible.

We would like to invite all interested men and women to participate in the Physikerinnentagung 2012.