Marilù Chiofalo, Professor of Condensed Matter Physics at the University of Pisa, is among the authors of the Women for Quantum (W4Q) Manifesto, an international initiative bringing together female professors of physics and quantum technologies with over ten years’ postdoctoral experience, active in both academia and industry, mainly in Europe and Japan. Professors Benedetta Mennucci and Chiara Roda of the University of Pisa have also endorsed the Manifesto, which has received hundreds of signatures from around the world.
Published in Communication Physics, part of the Nature group, the document highlights the challenges posed by the under-representation of women in the field and by the considerable number who leave academia after the PhD. In the European Union, women account for less than 22% of professorships in the natural sciences, with even lower percentages in countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom and Japan.
The Women for Quantum initiative calls for a radical shift in academia, leadership mechanisms and funding practices, promoting core values such as trust, diversity, collaboration and freedom of expression. The objective is to foster an environment in which women researchers feel fully supported and able to realise their full potential—an approach, the authors note, that would benefit the scientific community as a whole.
“The Manifesto is a first concrete step towards creating a space for transformation,” commented professor Marilù Chiofalo. “It is a collective act by women with responsibility and vision, arising from shared experiences and the will to build together a new way of practising science, one that every girl and woman can approach with the confidence of being her authentic self.”
On 17 September the Women for Quantum association was officially launched at the Sorbonne in Paris, where forthcoming actions to implement the values of the Manifesto were also announced.
