Magdalena Stoeva, PhD
Chair, IOMP-W

Gender balance and fighting the COVID-19 pandemic

IOMP Women Subcommittee’s objective is in compliance with the IOMP’s mission to advance medical physics practice worldwide by disseminating scientific and technical information, fostering the educational and professional development of medical physicists, and promoting the highest quality medical services for patients.

We are focused on various types of activities re to assisting women MPs with their professional development and attracting more women to medical physics and STEM in general.

IOMP Women Subcommittee is charged with the following mission:

• Develop, implement and coordinate tasks and projects related to the role of females in medical physics scientific, educational and practical aspects.
• Popularize the role of the women in medical physics and encourage female medical physicist to advance in the profession.
• Provide regular status/progress updates to the IOMP on all tasks and projects related to the IOMP Female Group.
• Promote the contribution of female medical physicists at major scientific conferences such as WC and ICMP.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed not only everyone’s daily routines, but also the way we work. Unfortunately this had negative effect over the activities of the IOMP Women Subcommittee which rely mainly on in-person meetings/event and networking. Regardless of these limitations IOMP Women Subcommittee can report a number of activities, some of which are listed below:

• Webinar: Challenges and Contribution of Women in STEM: Medical Physics, December 1, 2020, Organized by BMPS, IOMP-W, AFOMP.
• Contributions to IUPESM WiMPBME publications on gender balance and the impact of COVID-19 pandemic:

Barabino, G., Frize, M., Ibrahim, F. et al. Solutions to Gender Balance in STEM Fields Through Support, Training, Education and Mentoring: Report of the International Women in Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering Task Group. Sci Eng Ethics 26, 275–292 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-019-00097-0

Frize, M., Lhotska, L., Marcu, L. G. et al. The impact of COVID‐19 pandemic on gender‐related work from home in STEM fields—Report of the WiMPBME Task Group. Gender, Work & Organization (2021). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gwao.12690