Women in Supramolecular Chemistry documents the exciting journey of discovery and recognition of a community of women scientists in this subfield of chemistry that remains male-dominated even today. The community originated from a small group of friends and peers who met bi-weekly to mentor and support each other in their research, grants, and publications. It expanded to an established network to examine diversity, equity, and inclusion issues in supramolecular chemistry and support retention and progression of post-PhD women in the field with data, numerous projects, and financial support through the Royal Society of Chemistry Diversity and Inclusion fund, as well as from several grants. Its emergence, over the relatively short period of 2–3 years that included a global pandemic, makes this an especially heady, compelling, and timely story.
In many ways, the development and history of Women in Supramolecular Chemistry (WISC) shares the phases of progression and growth experienced by other movements such as those of Civil Rights, women’s, LGBTQIA, disabled, and other communities for recognition and equality. Scholars have evolved a variety of phase models to explicate the development
Stage 1: Absence of women not noted. This is the traditional approach to science and the curriculum from the perspective of the white, Eurocentric, middle-to-upper class male in which the absence of women is not noted and gender affects neither who becomes a scientist nor the science produced.
Stage 2: Recognition that most scientists are male and that science reflects a masculine perspective on the physical natural world. A few exceptional women such as Nobel laureates who have achieved the highest success as defined by the traditional standards of the discipline may be accepted in the scientific community and included in the curriculum.
Stage 3: Identification of barriers that prevent women from entering science. Women are recognised as a problem, anomaly, or absence from science and the curriculum. Women may be seen as victims, as protesters, or as deprived or defective variants, who deviate from the white, middle-to-upper class norm of the male scientist.
Stage 4: Search for women scientists and their unique contributions. The extent to which the role of women has been overlooked, misunderstood, or attributed to male colleagues throughout the history of science is explored to determine women’s scientific achievements.
Stage 5: Science done by feminists/women. In this phase, new perspectives result when women become the focus. Topics chosen for study, methods used, and language in which data and theories are described may shift and become expanded, improving the quality of science.
Stage 6: Science redefined and reconstructed to include us all.
Despite seeking advice and receiving some support from senior women in the field, they remained clear that the initial group would focus on issues for early- and mid-career women. Similar to the women and underrepresented people of colour in STEM in the US in the 1970s who realised that they needed data to understand their underrepresentation and the reasons for it, and sought a congressional mandate for the National Science Foundation (2000) to collect data and publish biennial reports beginning in 1982 with the Status of Women and Minorities, to which Persons with Disabilities was added in 1984, the group of colleagues realised in 2019 that they needed to collect data on the situation of women in supramolecular chemistry. They added a social scientist to their group to help them explore new methods and develop a survey to reach out to others in the field, as they describe in Chapter Five.
The co-authors begin the introductory chapter by emphasising that the volume does not centre on barriers to careers in STEM, or women in supramolecular chemistry as victims, or on blaming men (Stage 3). In Chapter Five, when they describe the history of WISC, they underline this again in their emphasis upon ‘calling in’ rather than ‘calling out’. However, parts of Chapter One and much of Chapter
The authors have sought the data on the numbers and accomplishments of women in supramolecular chemistry (Stage 4) and provide some names and references to successful senior women in the subdiscipline, especially in Chapter Five. However, just as they do not set out to focus on barriers, they also limit this information, since it was not their intention to provide a history of women in supramolecular chemistry.
Quite appropriately, the authors devote much of the volume, especially Chapters Three and Six, to the challenges and opportunities these early- and mid-career women currently face as they build and sustain their careers, particularly in the face of a global pandemic. Both in their feminist approaches and in their search for new methods such as autoethnography and embodiment, use of drawings, vignettes, and other creative arts-based methods, as well as in their language of inclusion, the authors have written a Stage 5 book. In my opinion, this is what makes the volume especially interesting and exciting.
Their ultimate goal, which they state in the introductory chapter, and emphasise heavily in Chapter Five, as well as intermittently throughout, is inclusion of all (Stage 6). They are clear about wanting to include men, more senior women, and others in the three community clusters they have established around parenting, disability/chronic illness/neurodivergence
The authors interweave emphases on diversity and intersectionality among women, the significance of other movements such as #MeToo and neurodivergence throughout their telling of the lived experiences of these women supramolecular chemists. These emphases mark another distinction between this and the mid-20th-century movements. The international inclusion and reach of the group, beginning in Europe, but now spreading to Asia, Australia, North America, and Africa, particularly distinguishes these women in STEM, as does its use of creative arts-based, autoethnography and embodiment methods. The creative methodologies of the drawings and vignettes interspersed throughout reveal and point out the similarities and differences arising from different international locations.
Other than its focus on women in supramolecular chemistry, perhaps the most significant difference between this volume and others based upon the lives and careers of women in STEM is that it chronicles experiences of women scientists during the global COVID-19 pandemic. The women’s revelations of struggles to parent while working remotely, maintain a functioning team to conduct research when some or none could be in the laboratory, and sustain long-distance relationships with partners and families when travel, particularly across international borders, was not possible, provide new insights into how research, careers, and families have been impacted by the pandemic. These insights and information make Women in Supramolecular Chemistry especially important reading for all in supramolecular chemistry and science, especially male scientists, university and research administrators, funders, and reviewers, as well as other women scientists.
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