Women in standardization stand for broadening of perspectives
“The potential is far from exhausted,” emphasizes Valerie Höllinger, CEO Austrian Standards. “That’s why we want to inspire women more than ever for standardization in this increasingly international environment,” she explains the mission. Standards describe what is “state of the art” – i.e. the “how” a product, an organization or a service should be designed in order to be recognized as widely as possible, internationally connectable and thus marketable and secure. “So that all of this is guaranteed, we rely on broad and diverse expertise in our committees, in which the standards are created,” explains Valerie Höllinger. She is using the upcoming International Women’s Day on March 8 to make an appeal: “We not only live diversity, for us it is crucial to our success. There are many companies that can do their job even better through diversity. The work of standardization would be without diversity. On the other hand, it’s simply impossible. That’s why we want to get women more enthusiastic about this meaningful work.”
Ass. Prof. Dr. Corina Klug from the Vehicle Safety Institute at Graz University of Technology. “By working on new standards, we can bring the latest research results into the products of tomorrow. In my case, these are vehicles, which we make safer for everyone. At the moment, our research focuses on the consideration of diversity in the evaluation of safety systems. To this end, we are working, for example, on standardized methods for virtual testing in which we can take differences in body types into account. In the EU-funded project VIRTUAL, in which we were a project partner, new foundations were laid for this. Now we have to pack this in future standards.”
Read the whole article from Austrian Standards: Standards brauchen Frauen – mehr denn je!
