European Women In Endocrinology (EUWIN)
European Women in Endocrinology (EUWIN), a peer-to-peer community supporting women in endocrinology throughout Europe, was established by ESE in May 2022. The aim of this community is to provide support, guidance and advice and to improve opportunities for women in European endocrinology and within ESE. We are delighted to be working with the group’s founders: Cynthia Andoniadou (UK), Wiebke Arlt (UK) and Jenny Visser (The Netherlands).
EUWIN’s primary aim is to enhance networking and collaboration between women in European endocrinology, importantly including mentoring and support for the career advancement of young female trainees and investigators, and those returning to work following a career break.
We celebrated the official EUWIN launch event at ECE 2022 in Milan which many delegates attended. We used the opportunity to gather ideas from delegates at the event as well as asking ESE Members’ opinions via a Membership Survey about what support women in endocrinology feel they need. This has helped us to develop a clear plan for moving forward.
If you would like to be part of the EUWIN community and receive relevant information and mailings directly to your inbox, please register with your details below.
See our Career support for women page and relevant EUWIN events.
EUWIN Activities
We are currently focusing on:
- Expanding the EUWIN website pages to ensure relevant career support information is readily available
- Developing a database for the EUWIN community to receive communications on relevant support and activities
- Please register for the EUWIN mailings by completing the registration form above
- Social media groups on LinkedIn and Twitter to enable the EUWIN community to interact and network and to stay up-to-date
- Informal peer-to-peer mentorship - if you are interested in becoming either a Mentor or Mentee, please tick the option within the registration form above
- Encouraging women to self-nominate for ESE Awards, Grants and positions on Committees and Boards – for ESE and for other societies. The ESE Awards will open again for nominations later this year, as will the EYES Observership Programmes
- A EUWIN Update and Reception event was held on Sunday 14 May at ECE 2023 in Istanbul, which was attended by around 100 delegates who enjoyed networking and hearing from the EUWIN founders.
- Two ESE Talks... EUWIN led events will take place at lunchtime on 6 September and 8 November 2023 at 13:00 (CEST/CET). Register now for FREE!
- 6 September - ESE Talks... Committees
- 8 November - ESE Talks... Demystifying Awards
Gender equality in ESE
Gender equality within ESE’s structures is part of ESE President Martin Reincke’s (2022-2023) focus on diversity, together with other areas; including age/career stage, and country size and geographical location. All four diversity measures are reviewed during all nomination procedures, and ESE has a clear statement on equality, diversity and inclusion.
Before the EUWIN community was launched, we undertook research as well as gathering Members’ views via ESE’s 2022 Membership survey and collating ideas from the EUWIN launch event. We are pleased to share our research findings with you below.
In a fairly recent article in Endocrine Views by Joy Y Wu, she highlighted the ongoing gender disparity in medicine which while it appears to be well-recognised, is seemingly slow to resolve. The data she discusses which are mainly from the USA, show that the numbers of female professors, department chairs and medical school deans are still substantially lower than men. She states that promotions in academic medicine are typically tied to metrics of recognition, yet women receive fewer speaking invitations, endowed Chairs, society leadership positions and society awards. Women are held to higher standards for promotion than men and are also paid less than men. The pandemic has also hindered progress towards gender equity in endocrinology. Read the full article on page 11 of Endocrine Views Issue 48 (Summer 2022).
ESE has carried out some analysis on gender within ESE’s Committees and Membership:
ESE Membership, 47% of ESE’s members are female (37% are male and 16% are undisclosed as of end June 2022).
ESE’s Committees There is increasing representation of women across ESE Committees and Boards and a commitment to growing this through various governance policies, including all Committee nominations now being reviewed by the Nominations Committee to gender diversity (as well as age/career stage, country location and size). Currently (as at May 2022) 35% of Committee positions are female and 65% male.
ESE’s Executive Committee On ExCo, 5 out of 13 (40%) are female, including Ex-Officio.
Historically a higher proportion of ESE grants were awarded to women than men in 2017-2021. In 2021 women received 361 ESE grants (vs 130 to men and 105 undisclosed gender).
There is still work to be done on ESE’s Awards where data showed that between 2011 and 2022, of the 188 Award Nominations received, 33 were females (18%). The Winners, however, represented 25% female and 75% male. The 2024 Awards open this autumn – please nominate a colleague, friend or yourself and encourage other women to nominate too.
Read more from ESE’s President in Endocrine Views Issue 49 on page 5.
Following the launch of the EUWIN initiative at ECE 2022 in May 2022, we have gathered feedback from three sources:
- From members via a member survey
- From delegates who attended the EUWIN launch event at ECE 2022
- From delegates who completed the ECE 2022 survey post event
We asked the Membership for comment on support needs for women across the field of endocrinology in the April 2022 membership survey.
The top three areas which the ESE Membership thought women could benefit from support were:
- To apply for leadership positions on committees, working groups, taskforces, boards etc. within medical societies/associations (not specifically ESE)
- Support for career re-entry following family and career
- Mentorship