As part of the U.N. Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development – Ocean Decade Laboratory Series, MTS held its kickoff Women Leadership in Marine Technology and Science Webinar on July 7. The panelists included: Dr. Wendy Watson-Wright, Founder and CEO of 7 Mile Bay; Dr. Shakila Merchant, Director of the City University of New York (CUNY) High School Initiative in Remote Sensing (HIRES) Program & Associate Director NOAA Center for Earth System Sciences and Remote Sensing Technologies (CESSRST) Center; Dr. Deidre Gibson, Associate Professor and Chair of the Marine and Environmental Science Department at Hampton University; MTS President Zdenka Willis, L.L.D., CEO of Veraison Consulting.

During the event and in breakout sessions after the event, the panel led discussions about the importance of diversity in marine science and technology and potential reasons progress has been slow for women in the marine science fields. The significance of mentorship and the best ways to find a mentor as well as measures that could be adopted to create true equitable participation in STEM fields. During the breakout rooms, the 65 attendees were divided into groups, where they were challenged to think about and discuss specific issues and possible solutions. Attendees discussed making going to sea/field work equitable, retaining more women in STEM studies and careers, reducing prejudice/stereotypes of women’s abilities, and creating easily accessible resources for managing relationships with majority male colleagues. While the consensus certainly was that none of these issues will be solved overnight, the event created a space for continued support and empowerment through connecting, informing, and inspiring women in the oceanographic research and technology fields.

“For me, the MTS event was both inspiring and humbling as I heard about the struggles that my co-panelists overcame during their journeys to becoming respected ocean scientists.  But the event also reminded me that we have more work to do.  We do need more events focused on gender equality, ones in which the audience is broadened so that all sectors of ocean science and technology, especially the private sector, are actively engaged,” said panelist Wendy M. Watson-Wright. “And as recommended in the Commonwealth Blue Charter publication, Gender Equity in Marine Science, we also need to target men to become ‘gender allies’ and active champions of gender equality.”

Future Women Leadership events will be held quarterly, with the next event scheduled for October 13, 2021. For more information on upcoming events, or to watch a recording of the July 7 event, visit the MTS Women Leadership webpage at https://www.mtsociety.org/women-leadership.

On July 8, MTS in collaboration with Ingenium, Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the Canadian Commission for UNESCO participated in an Edit-a-thon to create or improve Wikipedia entries to bolster the profiles of women and their contributions to ocean science, engineering, and technology.

Although women and non-binary persons are under-represented in ocean sciences, their accomplishments are even less represented, in both print media and online. The event provided a crash course on Wikipedia editing and then participants edited and added Wikipedia pages for women in marine science.  For more information on upcoming events, visit the MTS Women Leadership webpage at https://www.mtsociety.org/women-leadership.