Physics is an identity

Still full of emotions from my participation in Women in Physics Canada 2018! I hadn’t sat in physics talks for years and strangely enough, I understood everything. I actually feel like I understood more than I did when I was still a master student in physics. Listening to these women from around the world, my peers, I felt part of a community. Had this conference been held when I was still in Physics, I might not have left. Thank you so much to organizers Sophie Rochette, Maude Lizaire and Marie-Ève Boulanger for their contribution to a new way of doing physics. Things are changing all around, and the paradigm shift we’re pushing for in my current field of Northern Research feels connected to these issues of diversity and power relations in Physics and, indeed, academia at large.

In his speech during the event’s cocktail, professor André-Marie Tremblay said he had been thinking for a long time about what it means to be a woman in physics, and that he had realized that physics was an identity. This resonates so deeply with me. Many of us in the audience shed a couple of tears upon hearing this, because it rings true. And it speaks to why it’s so painful when you’re unhappy in something which is part of yourself. Science is changing - or maybe it’s coming home. I’m excited to be on the trip.