Get to know the "Women in Natural Sciences" (WiNS)

Seraphine and Valentina, you currently share the chairmanship of WiNS. How did you join the association?

Seraphine Zhang: Alongside my studies, I've always done volunteer work and seen the need to advocate for women in science because we are underrepresented. It's good to sometimes focus on things other than science. Especially at the beginning, a doctorate can be very challenging. In my case I had to build up my project from scratch. In such times the social aspect of volunteering is essential. I came to WiNS through a career seminar and later organized some events myself. I really enjoyed it and then one thing led to another.

Valentina Gasser: For me, it was also a coincidence. Colleagues invited me to a WiNS event. First, I was a guest, later I volunteered to help them with communication. I have always appreciated the fact that WiNS works on a voluntary basis. If you don't have time, it's fine; nobody will put pressure on you. I also appreciate WiNS as a platform where you can exchange ideas with other women who are also involved in research.

Research is a good keyword. You are first and foremost natural scientists and will soon be completing your doctorates. What are you working on?

Seraphine: Roughly speaking, I'm working on developing heterogeneous catalysts to upgrade methane, the main component of natural gas, by converting it to ethene. Ethene is the largest chemical building block in the chemical industry and is produced on a million-ton scale.

Valentina: Originally, I developed new methods to improve or enable organic reactions. For example, I work on nickel-catalyzed cross-couplings. In the meantime, I became particularly interested in the mechanistic background of reactions. I am now becoming more and more interested in quantum mechanical calculations.

In the past, people often discriminated against women in research. How do you experience everyday research life today as aspiring female scientists?

Seraphine: Well, there are still inappropriate, sometimes sexist comments and still prejudices, i.e. implicit bias. It starts with little jokes.  Sometimes people mean no harm with their comments, but it can still create a bad feeling when you're trying to learn something new, and they say you're not strong enough as a woman or not able to do this or that. For example, I have to handle very large gas cylinders for my research project. Sometimes you get the feeling that people are looking over your shoulder at work.

Valentina: Yes, I have heard unnecessary comments more than once. Sometimes I ignored them, but since I joined WiNS, I've become more aware that certain comments are not okay. Nevertheless, it is sometimes difficult to react to them because you are basically in an environment of dependencies.  

To deal with such situations properly, you offer workshops and seminars at WiNS. Can you give us an example?

Valentina: There have been quite a few, as you can see from our gallery on the website. For example, we had a workshop on "The Magic of Saying No" or a workshop on Implicit Bias, where we did role-playing to find out how best to react in certain situations. I think such events are very important, but at the same time internalizing what you’ve learned is difficult. It takes time, practice and preparation.

WiNS also offers career events. Who have already been your guests?

Valentina: Exactly, in our Career Series, we invite professionals from industry about once a month. We want to provide an insight into the professional world, currently mainly in chemistry and biology. For example, we've already had a patent attorney, a CEO from a start-up, people from the field of sustainability management, and a woman who worked at the ETH spin-off office. Now we also have engineers on board with Sensirion and Bruker. It's so diverse, there are always new career paths that can be discovered.

That sounds like a wide range, but in the end, fun is also a very important component, right? What about social events?

Seraphine: Yes, everything is growing for us at the moment. What has surprised me is how big the need is from the community. For example, we did a pizza party. We had so many registrations and we got a lot of really good feedback. Unfortunately, we don't have that many social events for pure networking...

Valentina: ...also because we don't have the budget. We are directly funded by the departments and it's not enough to fund social events in addition to workshops. Nevertheless, such events are important to increase the network and to give something back to our volunteers who spend so much time helping. In addition, informal events are an excellent opportunity to meet new members, simply have fun and exchange ideas with other women.  

But your events are open to everyone, right?

Valentina: Correct, most events are open to all genders and that is very important to us. We want everyone interested to benefit from our talented male and female speakers. At the same time, we stand for gender equality, for equal opportunities. And that's why we want to keep up the conversation with everyone involved, even if it's sometimes difficult to convince them that there really is still a need for action regarding gender equality.

You recently formulated an open letter and discussed it with the school management. Where do you see a need to catch up at ETH Zurich?

Seraphine: We advocate, for instance, for mandatory Diversity and Sexual Harassment Awareness Training. There was a module, but it was voluntary and online. However, it should be mandatory and, if possible, in-person for every new person at ETH. This is already common practice in many companies. The second point concerns parity hiring: 50 percent of new professors should be women. This should already be the case, but so far it hasn’t worked yet. Perhaps ETH should be faster in making commitments. A final central point is the anonymous documentation of incidents. We often have individual cases and there you have one person’s word against another’s. So the idea is to collect reports in a centralized way and then possibly respond with an internal investigation. Currently, it is hard to file a complaint if you are employed – there are all kinds of dependencies and once the employment of the filer has ended, it is too late to change something. Good solutions are still missing.  

What is your wish for the future?

Valentina: Especially in the academic environment of ETH, I would like to see even more awareness of how a balanced representation of women and men ultimately leads to better research. The departments could also recognize that events organized by our local organizations are an opportunity to collaborate and promote an inclusive environment for all. Furthermore, there needs to be more incentive to advocate for equity and more reward for working on these issues, including at the professor and departmental levels. We have proposed these changes, but they require additional resources. One of my heartfelt wishes would be that WiNS also succeeds in addressing schoolgirls in the future, perhaps with a schoolgirl day.

Seraphine: I'm super happy with how much momentum WiNS is generating right now. At our events, people come together, learn something new and have fun. We have successful Career Events where people apply to the company right after. I have to say I have a positive outlook for the future. It took a while, but now I have the feeling that things are changing. Now, it almost generates a bad image if you don't care about diversity. I'm happy if we can make a difference with our Open Letter and I think our successors will do a great job. I hope they can build on our accomplishments and, of course, we hope to have many more WiNS members.