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International Women's Day: ESA breaks the gender bias and looks to the future

08/03/2022 1635 views 3 likes

ESA / About Us / Diversity and Inclusiveness

For International Women's Day 2022, we have joined the #BreakTheBias campaign to help shed light on the issue of gender inequality, while celebrating the achievements of women who work at ESA by sharing their inspiring stories.

ESA has been striving to promote a gender balance representation, particularly in engineering and scientific fields; attracting women to jobs in space is one of the key objectives set out in the ESA Agenda 2025, within the framework of the actions that intend to enhance diversity and inclusiveness.

In recent years, the number of women graduates in STEM fields has increased, especially at bachelor and master level; however, after graduation, a process of dispersion of talents and skills starts and becomes more accentuated at every step. Gender equality will only be achieved when women preside over the STEM spaces, because those are the areas where there is the fastest salary progression, greater employment opportunities, where the professions of the future are developed.

At ESA, the number of applications received by women is growing. International Women’s Day, celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women, seemed like the perfect occasion to share the stories of our inspiring colleagues. We interviewed eight Young Graduates Trainee from eight different countries with the aim of empowering other girls and women to pursue studies or jobs in STEM.

Marta Bottani is a YGT in Environmental Effects on Navigation and Propagation, her job involves dealing with the monitoring and increasing of the accuracy of the positioning service offered by Galileo. Through her studies, Marta has been able to ‘combine her passion for science and engineering with her willingness to help tackle social challenges, such as sustainability and climate change’. Read her interview here.

Julika Wolf is a YGT in Earth Observation (EO) data visualisation, where she supports ESA’s communication activities on EO by turning satellite data into visuals that tell the story of our changing planet. When asked about the most exciting part of her job, she says, “Sometimes it feels like I get to be scientist, journalist, storyteller and artist all at once. I can nourish my need for creative expression and aesthetics through the creation of beautiful visuals, while I get to read research papers in search of new ideas, learning about different satellite technologies and data processing.” Read her interview here.

Ana Victoria Ladeira is a YGT in Knowledge Management. Ana talks about her job at ESA as if every day she ventured on a treasure hunt, where the trunk contains precious information. “The Agency produces a tremendous amount of knowledge running space missions, and no single human could keep track of it all. Given my background in natural language processing and artificial intelligence, I get to help automate the extraction of relevant information and connect different repositories of knowledge within ESA.” Read her interview here.

Alix De Beusscher has expertise in data processing and artificial intelligence too; her job as a YGT involves EO data analysis with AI. Alix is working on onboard machine learning for ‘smallsats’, and she explains, “This allows for shorter data processing times for faster detection or response to specific events such as fires or natural disasters.” She is confident that, in the future, more women will be part of the adventure of space exploration; the number of female candidates who applied to the 2021 ESA astronaut selection is promising. Read her interview here.

Tatjana Mandil, a YGT for Model-based Systems Engineering, is working on the lunar Gateway mission. She has a far-reaching vision of the future of space exploration, saying, “It won’t be long until a lot of our space travel and research is no longer done from Earth. Our next step is the Moon, which can be the outpost for future Mars missions and other interplanetary endeavours”. Talking about diversity, Tatjana believes that ‘in order for innovation to happen, a wide variety of minds working together is needed’. Read her interview here.

Meadhbh Griffin is a YGT in the Flight Software Systems section and she supports space missions by developing, validating and verifying flight software. Curiosity was her compass along the way, she explains, “While studying engineering, I read an article about the Curiosity rover where the team talked about how they’d used the C programming language. I was surprised that something so advanced relied on the same programming language I was learning; that eventually inspired me to do a masters in space technology with the hopes of joining ESA.” Read her interview here.

Antonia Vojtekova is a YGT for Data Science on Archives. When looking at the future of space exploration, she has some interesting thoughts about the discoveries she would like to witness. “What I hope for is that in my lifetime we will be able to detect some biosignatures in the atmosphere of exoplanets, understand the physics of the black hole and explore the use of AI in space exploration,” said Antonia. Read her interview here.

Xiaochen Zhang is planetary geologist; when asked about her motivation to pursue studies in Earth sciences, she says, “I am particularly interested in learning how we can use extraterrestrial resources when humankind eventually achieves long-term presence on another planetary surface.” Read her interview here.

When talking about the future of space exploration, ‘unpredictable’ could be the word that comes up most frequently. “Less than 100 years ago, most people would never have thought that going to space or walking on the Moon would have been possible. Years before, humankind was barely aware of the existence of space,” says Alix de Beusscher.

Yet, no matter how unpredictable, there is something on which all the interviewees agree: we must work together to ensure that the future of space exploration is peaceful, sustainable and inclusive.