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Pandor shines light on gender at global science summit

Vienna - Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor has criticised a global nuclear body for not having enough women representatives at a science and technology conference.

In a keynote speech on Monday at the opening of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation’s (CTBTO) 2015 Science and Technology Conference, held at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Pandor pointed out that the ranks of speakers were very thin on women.

She was the only woman seated in the front rows of the hall, which were packed with high-calibre scientists, diplomats and other notables.

Pandor’s speech, which outlined South Africa’s efforts to put science and technology squarely at the centre of the national stage, and to support scientific endeavours across the continent, attracted widespread praise. “So inspiring”, “very thoughtful and interesting” and “awesome” were comments heard from many delegates to the conference, which has attracted over 1 000 participants, most of them scientists working in fields relevant to the CTBTO’s work.

It was no mean feat for Pandor to hold such a diverse and scientifically distinguished international audience in thrall.

Gender imbalance is an issue that plagues science in many areas and across the world; in an interview on Sunday, Pandor admitted with refreshing honesty that she feels gender balance in South African science leaves something to be desired, too: “To be honest, we do need to do more to address this,” she said.

The relative absence of women’s voices and engagement at high levels in the quest to ban nuclear testing would become something of a meme for the day.

Dr Patricia Lewis, Research Director on International Security at Chatham House (the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London) noted in a panel discussion later in the day that “cognitive diversity”, as she called it, is one of the most creative ways to find solutions to difficult problems, and that whenever women’s brains are excluded from scientific or other endeavours, we are excluding “some of the top brains in our world”.

She was responding to a question from a young Indian woman scientist.

Women have strong reason to get behind the CTBTO. Radioactivity from the 2000-odd nuclear tests over the latter half of the 20th century has, as a couple of speakers pointed out, impacted disproportionately on women and children, according to a report from the December 2014 Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons.

The CTBTO looks, listens and sniffs, as the organisation puts it, for signs of a nuclear test anywhere in the world. Its ability to detect these signs was put to the test in an Integrated Field Exercise, held in Jordan at the end of 2014, showcasing some of the incredibly sensitive techniques that are used to hunt out signals of nuclear activity, from infra-sound to seismology.

Interestingly, these techniques have found valuable applications in the civilian world, too – the science has been put to work in tracking the radioactive plume from Fukushima, in tsunami warning systems and in following the movements of large marine mammals.

It is an august and very effective organisation which has made a real impact on global safety – as Dr Lassina Zerbo, executive secretary of the CTBTO (and an African, born and raised in Burkina Faso) notes, apart from North Korea, no country has held a nuclear test in 17 years.

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