Following the success from last year's event, the chemistry department hosted another IUPAC Global Women’s Breakfast event to celebrate the achievements of women in science and address gender inequities in the STEM fields.

The IUPAC’s Global Women’s Breakfast Event (Global Women's Breakfast - IUPAC | International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry) began in 2011 as a way for women chemists to connect, celebrate their work, and network with others to overcome the barriers to gender equality within science.

Lancaster’s Chemistry departmental Global Women’s Breakfast event was well attended by staff and students from across the department and featured talks delivered by departmental staff, students, and wider members of the faculty. One of the main purposes of this year’s event was to enable individuals to network and share their lived experience through some collaborative work, fitting with theme of this year's IUPAC event as: ‘many voices, one science’.

Kicking off the event was Dr Nick Fletcher, departmental Director of EDI, who introduced the Global Women’s Breakfast and outlined the role of the EDI committee within the Department. Following on from this, Dr Sophie Rawnsely-Lau and Dr Abi Frith gave an account from the proceedings of last year’s Global Women’s Breakfast, noting the key outcomes that from the last meeting. They concluded their talk by highlighting some WISE statistics, which indicated twice as many women are in STEM-based careers compared to a decade ago. This shows the positive progress that has taken place in recent years, however, the statistics also point out that in 2019 women only represented 23% of the workforce in core-STEM jobs. Therefore, showcasing that work still needs to be done in this area and the importance of events such as the global women’s breakfast.

PhD student, Amelia Milner, then went on to discuss her work while at York University as an undergraduate student on decolonising the chemistry undergraduate degree scheme. Ameila’s contribution to this work helped to produce resources to help highlight and celebrate the contributions of non-white scientists within chemistry. The hope was that this work would help encourage those from UK ethnic minorities to pursue chemistry at university.

The session concluded with a short segment from Ellen Greyling, Faculty Research and Engagement Officer, explaining the ways in which the Research and Engagement Team can support Women + and other minority groups within STEM get their voices heard, be it through public engagement, faculty research news articles, or contributing to their EDI-based blog series.

During the networking segment, attendees were also encouraged to brainstorm some posed questions such as sharing their biggest achievements of working in STEM, as well as suggesting ways to address the still-present barriers and “leaky pipeline” of women entering into and remaining within STEM-based careers.

"It was a really great opportunity to network, and to highlight both our aspirations, concerns and barriers,” said Dr Fletcher. “The event proved to a great space to open new conversations through honest sharing of lived experience, and we hope to continue these as we support all of our students and staff."

Dr Rawnsley-Lau added: “It was fantastic to see the GWB for the second year running in the Chemistry Department! This gave me hope for on-going efforts from both colleagues and students wanting to continue discussions and address barriers for women and underrepresented communities in STEM."