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Pure and Applied Chemistry Volume 93, Issue 8
Frontmatter
pp. i-iv. https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2021-frontmatter8
In this issue
pp. v-v. https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2021-graphabs8
Special topic issue
Preface
Mark C. Cesa and Mei-Hung Chiu
The Gender Gap in Science – A PAC Special Topics Issue 829
Invited papers
Susan White and Rachel Ivie
The Global Survey of Scientists: encountering sexual harassment 831
Silvina Ponce Dawson
Women in physics 839
Francesca Primas
Initiatives to tackle the gender gap in astronomy 849
Lucilla Spini, John Buckeridge, Guy Smagghe, Sarita Maree and Nathalie Fomproix
Women must be equal partners in science: gender-balance lessons from biology 857
L. Anthea Brooks and Itahisa Déniz-González
An apercu of the current status of women in ocean science 869
Jodi Tims and Reyyan Ayfer
ACM-W: global growth for a local impact 885
Irvy M. A. Gledhill, Francisca Nneka Okeke, Marie-Francoise Ouedraogo and Maria Potgieter
The gender gap among scientists in Africa: results from the global survey and recommendations for future work 889
Licia Bosco Damous and Colette Guillopé
Gender-based violence in higher education and research: a European perspective 899
Rachel Mamlok-Naaman
Socio-cultural developments of women in science 907
Shobhana Narasimhan
Participation of women in science in the developed and developing worlds: inverted U of feminization of the scientific workforce, gender equity and retention 913
Guadalupe I. Lozano
How culture, institutions, and individuals shape the evolving gender gap in science and mathematics: an equity provocation for the scientific community 927
Jung Sun Kim
What can women’s networks do to close the gender gap in STEM? 937
Laura Norton and Ale Palermo
Breaking the barriers – towards a more inclusive chemical sciences community 945
Merrilyn Goos and Regina Kelly
Addressing the gender gap in science: lessons from examining international initiatives 949
Catherine Jami
Women in science: from images to data 955
PREFACE https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2021-1009
The term gender gap, as defined by the World Economic Forum (“The Global Gender Gap Index, 2020” (http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2020/the-global-gender-gap-index-2020/), denotes differences “between women and men in terms of their levels of participation, access, rights, remuneration or benefits.” That a gender gap exists in the sciences is clearly evident; according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, fewer than 30% of the world’s researchers are women (Women in Science, http://uis.unesco.org/en/topic/women-science.) Numerous studies have investigated the gender gap in professional fields.
In 2017 IUPAC joined ten other international unions and organizations in the natural sciences, computing, and mathematics to begin a three-year project, funded by the International Science Council, ISC (formerly ICSU), to examine the gender gap in science and to recommend actions to reduce the gap between men and women in these fields. The project, entitled, “A Global Approach to the Gender Gap in Mathematical, Computing, and Natural Sciences: How to Measure It, How to Reduce It?” (https://gender-gap-in-science.org/), was co-led by IUPAC and the International Mathematical Union, IMU. Project work was divided into three main tasks: a Global Survey of women and men in the sciences, mathematics and computing to measure differences between women’s and men’s experiences in their education, employment, and personal lives; a study of publication patterns to measure differences between women’s and men’s rate of publication of their research, including trends over time; and development of a database of good practices for encouraging girls and young women to consider careers in the scientific, mathematical and computing fields and for supporting women in these fields.
Results of the work on these tasks (Chiu and Cesa, Chem. Int. 42(3), 16-21; https://doi.org/10.1515/ci-2020-0306) clearly showed that women continue to have less positive experiences than men in education and employment across scientific disciplines, geographic regions, and levels of economic development (https://gender-gap-in-science.org/2020/06/25/gender-gap-in-science-book/). At the end of the three-year project, a final conference was organized at the International Center for Theoretical Physics, ICTP, in Trieste, Italy, at which results of the project were shared with an audience of approximately 100 international leaders in advancing gender equality in their scientific unions, universities, and organizations. At the conference a series of recommendations for improving gender awareness for international unions, local organizations, and instructors and parents was prepared and disseminated (https://gender-gap-in-science.org/project-bookbooklet/).
We have invited sixteen persons from a range of scientific, mathematical and computing disciplines who contributed to the Gender Gap Project and participated in the final project conference to prepare articles for this special topics issue of Pure and Applied Chemistry. Their contributions to this issue describe their initiatives and advances to improve gender equity and balance in schools, universities, research institutions and industry.
This issue of PAC includes articles that describe the findings of the Global Survey; initiatives by international scientific, mathematical and computing unions to reduce the gender gap in their fields, including physics, astronomy, biology, ocean science, computing machinery, and mathematics; regional and geographical approaches to reducing the gender gap, particularly in the developing world; and new and innovative approaches toward gender equity, including networking initiatives, and good practices around the world for encouraging girls and young women to pursue careers in science.
Following on the Gender Gap Project, IUPAC and other international organizations are building on the project’s findings to advance gender equity in their disciplines. In 2020 the Standing Committee for Gender Equality in Science, SCGES, was instituted. IUPAC is a founding member of SCGES along with fifteen other international partners. IUPAC is currently working on a project to extend the Gender Gap project: https://iupac.org/project/2020-016-3-020. The Global Survey data is being analyzed with a specific focus on responses from persons in the chemical sciences. IUPAC is collaborating with an initiative by several scientific publishers to examine gender trends, and the project is also assembling a list of good practices for encouraging women and girls to explore chemistry-related careers.
Mark Cesa
2014-2015 President, IUPAC
Gender Gap Project Executive Committee
Mei-Hung Chiu
IUPAC Executive Committee
Gender Gap Project Executive Committee
post feature image: Rosalind Franklin (1920–1958), “The Dark Lady of DNA.” (Henry Grant Archive/Museum of London); see https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2020-1210