Updated Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement - July 2022

Volunteer leaders and committee members of WIS PDX have spent significant time discussing and reflecting on how we can foster a more supportive community. We appreciate that the language previously used in our mission, values, and organization title fails to promote the full range of inclusivity that WIS PDX aims to support. In an effort to correct this, we updated our value statements to more accurately reflect our true intentions and the commitment we will carry into the future.Our updated values statements are listed below:

• We believe women in the sciences include any person identifying as a woman who works, studies, or aspires to be in a science-related field.
• We create programming that is focused on professional and personal development, cross-career mentoring, networking, community building, and outreach and education.
• We promote healthy and productive environments for identifying and addressing issues specific to women in the sciences, encouraging dialogue that highlights and embraces diversity across all scientific careers.
• We offer support and real-life guidance for navigating a balanced scientific career path and provide a platform for women to learn from one another’s experiences.
• We foster creative and critical thinking to positively influence policies related to women and to science.
• We engage younger generations to increase awareness of opportunities for female scientists and provide role models to increase the visibility of women in STEM-related fields.
• We expect participants in our events to be respectful to our community and follow our code of conduct.

As we look forward to embracing and implementing our updated values statement, we would like to take this opportunity to explain the changes we have made and why. The first revision  expands the language used to describe members of the WIS PDX community, replacing “women” with  “women and individuals of other marginalized genders.”  We recognize gender as a societal construct, and WIS PDX aims to promote inclusion for all individuals whose gender identity has not been supported under the traditional patriarchal system.WIS also acknowledges that the word “women” has not historically been used in ways that are inclusive of all who identify as women, especially in groups and organizations claiming to fight for “women’s rights.” Many previous and current women’s rights movements exclude women of color, disabled women, and/or trans-women (For more information about this, we recommend reading Ain’t I A Woman by bell hooks or White Feminism by Koa Beck). Within WIS PDX, we recognize women of all intersectional identities and commit to welcoming, supporting, fighting for, and empowering all through our work. Another important revision to our values includes the intent to create a safe space for those affected by the traditionally exclusive environments of STEM fields. In addition to providing a welcoming place for all individuals, we commit to furthering our mission of STEM inclusivity by battling all types of oppression. These systems of discrimination include patriarchy/ misogyny, white supremacy/ racism, homophobia and transphobia, xenophobia, and ableism. We appreciate how these various systems of oppression are intertwined into the fabric of our society and recognize that we must engage in a larger fight against all types of oppression in order to achieve our larger goal of equity in STEM.Finally, it is an organizational-wide goal for 2022 to develop more permanent ways to improve the inclusivity of our organization's name to reflect our commitment to total inclusivity in STEM. The volunteers and committee members at WIS PDX continually strive to learn and improve, and we welcome feedback from anyone, at any time, should we fail to embody these values in our work, and we commit to being accountable for living by these values in everything we do.