ETH Global Lecture Series: Towards Gender Equity
8 March 2021 - Online Event - Iris Bohnet and Sarah Springman discuss the contextual parameters essential for closing the gender gap.
In 1971, women in Switzerland gained the right to vote. 50 years on, while we have become more aware of persistent local and global gender inequity, many organisations and individuals are still struggling with how to most effectively create more inclusive workplaces and societies. What factors do you need to take into account to foster equality? How should data be used to make more informed decisions in this context? And what does evidence-based decision-making actually mean?
On the occasion of International Women’s Day 2021, join Professor Iris Bohnet, Academic Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, and ETH Zurich Rector Professor Sarah Springman in conversation with Chris Luebkeman, Head of Strategic Foresight at ETH Zurich, as they discuss what we’ve learned so far, and where to go next on the path towards gender equity.
Free public online event
Moderated by Chris Luebkeman, ETH Zurich
Monday, 8 March 2021
14.00 - 15.00 Zurich (CET)
external page Iris Bohnet, the Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government, is the Academic Dean of Harvard Kennedy School. She is a behavioral economist, combining insights from economics and psychology to improve decision-making in organizations and society, often with a gender or cross-cultural perspective. Her most recent research examines behavioral design to de-bias how we live, learn and work.
She is the author of the award-winning book What Works: Gender Equality by Design, and advises governments and companies on the topic around the world. Professor Bohnet is the co-director of the Women and Public Policy Program and the faculty chair of the executive program “Global Leadership and Public Policy for the 21st Century” for the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders. She serves on the boards, advisory boards or as a patron of Credit Suisse Group, Applied, Edge, genEquality, TaketheLeadWomen, We Shape Tech, Women in Banking and Finance, and the UK Government’s Equalities Office as well as numerous academic journals. She was named one of the Most Influential People in Gender Policy by apolitical in 2018 and 2019, a Leading Thinker of Victoria, Australia, 2016-2019, and has received an honorary degree from the University of Lucerne, Switzerland, in 2016. She is married and the mother of two children.
Sarah Marcella Springman has been Full Professor for Geotechnical Engineering at ETH Zurich since January 1997 and Rector of the university since January 2015.
Born in London in 1956, Professor Springman studied soil mechanics at Cambridge University before embarking on a career in industry. She worked for five years as an engineer on several geotechnical projects in England, Fiji, and Australia before returning to Cambridge, where she earned her PhD in 1989 and established an academic career as a lecturer. She has been a full professor at the ETH Zurich Institute for Geotechnical Engineering since 1997, heading the institute from 2001 to 2005 and again from 2009 to 2011. Professor Springman also served as the Director of the ETH Zurich Network for Natural Hazards from 2007 to 2009 and as Joint Deputy Head of the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering from 2013 to 2014.
Her research interests focus on soil-structure interaction and the geotechnical aspects of natural hazards, in particular landslides and melting permafrost. She uses geotechnical modelling to develop solutions that can improve the design of structures.