Went to an all girls event on Tuesday. The first one in this International Year of Chemistry. A breakfast for women chemists at Liverpool John Moores Uni. We skype linked with numerous other breakfasts from around the world and thought about how to get girls into chemistry.
Great presentation from Dr Helen Aspinall Liverpool Uni showing how once women are at uni there is very little difference gender wise in take up for undergrads.
Some super speakers sharing a schools point of view, the industry scene and then I talked about how to get the very young interested and to keep up interest in the non specialist.
It was certainly worth doing especially as this is the first event in a year of celebrations.
I think perhaps people like me have the hardest job - it certainly seems that once you choose chemistry there is nothing to stop you getting on in academia although industry still doesn't have enough senior women and anecdotal reports seem to say it is still very blokey. But getting girls interested in the first place is still hard - we are so influenced by the media and girls want to fit in so being a scientist especially a chemist is still just that little bit too strange.
No comments:
Post a Comment