didthisreallyhappen.net: Fighting everyday sexism in academia, one comic strip at a time

Besides the institutional barriers to gender parity, sexist behaviors in the workplace contribute to discourage women to pursue an academic career, and reinforce gender stereotypes that are harmful to their progress and recognition in academia. didthisreallyhappen.net is a community-based platform that aims at fighting against this type of sexism by means of, literally, illustrations.

The project Did this really happen? originated in Lyon, France, within the ERC-funded project AUGURY. We happened to be a mostly feminine team working in geodynamics, a male-dominated research area. Very quickly, we found ourselves confronted to sexist comments on a regular basis. Since then, we experimented with creating spaces and tools to talk about these issues, within our team, our department, and the whole scientific community.

To share our experiences, we translated some of the sexist situations we witnessed into comics. This project evolved into an online platform (https://didthisreallyhappen.net/) where anyone can submit anonymously testimonies on everyday sexism in academia. The stories are then translated into comics by artist Alice Adenis, and posted on the website without any comment or judgement.

During this session, we would like to share our testimony, encourage contributions to the platform, and discuss further actions.