NSF shares its experiences and best practices on Gender in STEM fields with the global community

‘Gender Summit’ initiative is a mission-oriented platform for evidence-led dialogue involving researchers, scholars, educators, policy makers, and stakeholders in science endeavours. Its purpose is to identify sources and consequences of biases and gaps in research evidence, science knowledge, and science practice under the overarching theme of equality to enhance scientific excellence. ‘Gender Summit’ initiative had been created in 2011 as an outcome from a project, ‘genSET’ and its report (2010) titled ‘Recommendations for action on the gender dimension in science’ funded by the 7^th EU Framework Programme. Since 2011, several regional Gender Summit platforms had been established beyond Europe, covering countries in North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia Pacific. Globally, to-date, this has resulted in 25 Gender Summit events with over 50 days of dialogue involving some 2000+ expert speakers, and 10,000+ participants.

Apart from launching a new regional platform for India, the ‘Gender Summit 25’ event highlighted the need to strengthening evidence-based actions such as addressing under-representation of women in clinical trials, algorithmic bias in AI, energy transitions that marginalise women as only beneficiaries rather than decision-makers etc. and reiterated its core mission of advancing excellence in science, research and innovation by integrating gender-aware practices and correcting gender blind biases in knowledge production and innovation.  

25^th Gender Summit was held on 17^th and 18^th November 2025 virtually focusing on the Asia Pacific Region with a view to launching a new regional platform; ‘Gender Summit – India’ under the theme; ‘Advancing women and excellence in research and innovation’. NSF was represented at two of its panels, i.e., in Panel 01 on ‘Global and Indian perspectives on the progress made and the challenges ahead in advancing gender sensitive science and innovation’ and in Panel 03 on ‘Energy transition and Climate Change’. Dr Sepalika Sudasinghe, Director General of NSF delivered a presentation in Panel 01 on ‘Facilitating Gender in STEM fields in a developing country: Perspectives from the National Science Foundation, Sri Lanka’ and Ms Thilinakumari Kandanamulla, Senior Scientific Officer of NSF (Coordinator of the NSF WEST Programme) delivered a presentation on ‘Secure, Affordable, and Sustainable Energy for Sri Lanka’ .