Author: Francesca Primas
Affiliation: ESO
Country: Germany
Co-Author(s): David Meissner
Affiliation: European School Munich ESM
Country: Germany
Co-Author(s): Dara Norman
Affiliation: NOAO
Country: USA
Title: AstroVoices: a home-made project with a huge response and impact.
In March 2019, we have launched a call within the IAU Membership and via social media for women astronomers of all levels (from graduate students to full professors) to send us short videoclips in which they were stating their name, affiliation and/or nationality and passion for astronomy. We were hoping to receive enough videoclips to make a 10min movie. However, despite the limited window for participating (about 2 weeks), the response has been overwhelming, and by the end of March we totalled 600 videoclips, accompanied by many positive and supportive messages.
The original idea to make just one short movie that would thus empower women astronomers and present astronomical research as a viable career to young girls and women was strongly impacted by the enormous response we received. We are now working to create several movies, some with a very international flavour, others per geographical area, so that people from different countries/regions/continents will be able to use the ones closer to their area during their astronomical gatherings.
We will also shortly present possible ideas to further expand this simple and home-made experiment to other aspects that touch upon diversity and inclusion and that could be directed to broader audiences.