Celebrating diversity in the chemical sciences

24 November 2017

Leading figures from academia, industry and policy gathered at our London headquarters on Monday 13 November to discuss progress and challenges in diversity in STEM, as a celebration of Marie Skłodowska Curie’s 150th birthday.

As well as recognising the remarkable achievements of Marie Curie, the event brought together people from across the community to discuss how we can make a difference to inclusion and diversity in the chemical sciences, and to share the strategies that have helped overcome challenges.

“Bringing together chemical scientists from diverse cultures, with varied backgrounds and a wealth of different experiences – and celebrating their successes – is at the heart of what the Royal Society of Chemistry is all about,” said our president, Professor Sir John Holman, in his welcome address. “By bringing together voices from across our community to share the strategies that have helped to make a difference, we can overcome challenges, and identify positive solutions that will foster change in the future.”

Picture: © Royal Society of Chemistry/ MPP Image Creation

Making progress

Professor Sarah Harper, director of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, opened the talks with a lecture on how demographic trends and culture can have an impact on some of the diversity challenges faced in science, focusing particularly on women in the workplace through the life course.

Professor Dame Julia Higgins, president of the Institute of Physics, then shared some personal experiences and reflections on how representation of women in the sciences has progressed, touching on her time on our awards committee, where she fought for consideration of career breaks.

Discussing diversity

A panel discussion, chaired by science journalist, Dr Mark Peplow, featured:

Dr Julia Hubbard, research fellow at the Crick Institute;
Imran Khan, head of public engagement at the Wellcome Trust;
Dr Katie Perry, chief executive of the Daphne Jackson Trust;
David Ruebain, chief executive of the Equality Challenge Unit;
Professor David Smith FRSC, from the University of York;
Dr Alison Wall, associate director of the EPSRC;
And Dame Angela Strank DBE FREng, chief scientist at BP.

The conversation included thoughts on how to introduce more inclusive recruitment processes; how measures and diversity policies introduced by chemistry departments can benefit everyone; the importance of access to retraining for people with disabilities; and support for those taking a career break available through the Daphne Jackson Trust.

Panellists from left to right: Dr Julia Hubbard, Dr Alison Wall, David Ruebain, Professor David Smith, Imran Khan, Dame Angela Strank, Dr Katie Perry and chair, Dr Mark Peplow Picture: © Royal Society of Chemistry/MPP Image Creation

“We want to attract the very best talent from the diversity that the world brings,” said Dame Angela Strank. “Diverse talent will thrive in an inclusive environment. If we get the ‘I’ [inclusion] bit right, then the ‘D’ [diversity] bit will follow.”

Considering all aspects of diversity

David Ruebain highlighted the importance of not just thinking about protected characteristics when considering inclusion and diversity, as well as not looking at characteristics in isolation. “The elephant in the room is socioeconomic background,” he said, “no one lives in a silo; all of us have a multiplicity of identities. If we’re going to be serious about barrier removal, we need to think effectively in that way.”

Imran Khan emphasised the need for the scientific community to be truly representative of society if we want more people to be engaged with science, using the recent EU referendum as an example of the risks of isolating sections of society.

“We know that science has an anti-working class bias,” he said. “We can’t care about the rest of society unless we reflect, as a community, the rest of society. And they won’t care about us, until we do.”

Questions from the audience touched on the issues of “imposter syndrome” at undergraduate level, how to build greater public trust in science, and how to promote shared parental leave arrangements, so that both partners can engage in childcare.

Arnau Bertran and Alva Romero, both Masters students at Imperial College London, said that the event had addressed a number of their own concerns as early career scientists.

“The topics that were covered were really interesting and there was a lot of diversity from the speakers,” said Alva. “In my case, of all the things that were talked about, it was regarding women in research and the implications of having children – that's something that I've been thinking about because it's an important issue for a woman. Having heard about these things here is good, because it's now not just a worry that I have myself, it's something that's being worked on, and hopefully by the time I get into that stage, and am thinking about having children, then maybe things will be better than they are now.”

“It made me realise that this is more possible – combining my personal life and having a family, with doing research”, said Arnau. “Before, it seemed like you either did one thing or the other, but it seems now you can manage to do both – have a family and a rewarding career.”

Creating an atmosphere that celebrates diversity

The event was organised by our inclusion and diversity executive, Philippa Matthews, our external relations manager, Ale Palermo, as well as Professor Sue Gibson from Imperial College London, and Professors Duncan Bruce and Caroline Dessent from the University of York, whose chemistry departments both hold the Athena SWAN gold award.

“We were in the luxurious position of being able to invite the people who we knew would have something very, very interesting to say, and it's not been a disappointment at all”, said Professor Gibson. “One of the things I'm very proud of in our [Athena SWAN] submission is the fact that we've had a huge uptake in shared parental leave in the last few years.”

“Most of the talks were concentrating on gender, and there's an almost tacit assumption that we've dealt with gender because diversity's moved on to all of the other protected characteristics, and we're trying to address those, and we haven't actually got anywhere near sorting gender out,” said Professor Bruce.

“What that tells us is the magnitude of the challenge that we've absolutely still got and that we need to embrace. The other thing I might like to challenge though, that somebody said, was that industry could learn a lot from academia. Personally, I think it's exactly the other way round, that we have got a huge amount to learn from the way that industry does something.

“I think actually, what we need is a dialogue. We need a dialogue because there's things that we will learn, there are things that they will learn, and the better that we can communicate, the better the whole thing will move forward.”

In his closing remarks, Sir John Holman echoed this need for further collaboration and discussion in order to make progress: “We have made progress”, he said. “Some of it has been very rapid; some of it has been surprisingly slow.

“Change and rapid change is possible, but there is an awful long way to go. Creating an atmosphere that celebrates diversity rather than seeing it as a problem is so beneficial to making progress.”

Watch the video of the talks and panel discussion, and look out for our report into the current landscape of inclusion and diversity in the chemical sciences, which will be published in February 2018.