ESO-WISE Women in Stroke Leadership Workshop

Are men Ferraries and women Volvo’s and is this one of the reasons why women are largely underrepresented as the career makes its way towards the top of Academia?

The facts are indisputable and have been shown even in blinded trials.

There is a glass ceiling and even a glass cliff in some instances,

Women are less likely to get a position, mentoring and the higher salary in a blinded application study where the only difference is the male or female name on the application.

As the career unfolds the percentage of women decreases.

The ESO WISE workshop chaired by Else Charlotte Sandset and Christine Kremer, clearly showed the different views and data on the gender issues in the life of a stroke physician.

We heard about the challenges and viewpoints from Natalia Rost, Hanne Christensen Valeria Caso and Jaap Kapelle and from an early-mid career viewpoint by Diana Aguiar de Sousa and Mira Katan giving us very illustrative data.

But the session also included optimistic and inspiring thoughts from the Lancet by Catilin Aspinall with elaboration on how the Lancet family of journals are exploring solutions to the problem and increasing the visibility of women, invited commentary and commissioned reviews.

The closing debate included interesting views on how to change the structure and was truly inspiring, raising issues like fixed numbers for male/female ratios at conferences and in general to change and push the percentages up. Changing the scenery by focusing on networking, mentoring and sponsoring, and working from within to promote equality.

From our perspective it starts with ESOC and WISE already improving the structure and in time hopefully making changes to the stroke-scene as well as society.