The Sky is the Limit

The Iupac Global Women’s breakfast 2023 witnessed more than 30 000 scientists from around the world participating in more than 400 breakfast events across more than 75 countries. Groups from all types of science organizations from high schools to scientific societies, universities, companies, governments, and non-governmental organizations were invited to host events. This year, the Global Women’s breakfast was also a flagship event of the International Year of Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development in partnership with Unesco bringing together people from all science disciplines. The theme of this year’s Global Women’s breakfast was “Breaking Barriers in Science”.

Chemistry, with a broad definition of its borders, is breaking barriers already. It historically emerged and developed as an interdisciplinary scientific field in line with Pauling’s definition of the chemical bond. “Whatever is convenient to the chemist to define as a bond”, chemistry can be defined as a discipline encircling all areas which are of interest to chemists. In modern chemistry, this rich and diverse world encompasses remarkable scientific creativity and novelty, intellectual innovation, and the production of new expertise.

The urge to address women issues in the chemical field started in 2011 when the first Iupac Global Women’s Breakfast took place: Women Sharing a Chemical Moment in Time was organized as part of the International Year of Chemistry. This desire for international cooperation among female chemists produced proposals of ways how to empower and support women across the globe. The goal of the Global Women’s breakfast series is to establish an active network of people of all genders to overcome the barriers to gender equality in science.

This year we have decided to join efforts together to hold a combined Global Women’s breakfast online meeting partnering with the German Chemical Society (GDCh) and the National Committee of Pure and Applied Chemistry Nupac, Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT) in Egypt.

The agenda was full of gender related topics holding statistics of balance and equity problems in both countries. With many female leaders in Egypt starting from Cleopatra to many ministers in today’s government, Egypt has become a role model for many different societies. Yet, there is more to be done. The Vice President of Ain Shams University, also a female in leadership, Ghada Farouk, has talked about the faculty of women at this university especially dedicated to educating women in arts and sciences. The other contributions of the participants of both from Egypt and Germany focused on the comparison on many aspects between the two cultures and the many opportunities of improving the existing system. The concluding remarks emphasized the importance of self-marketing and the intercultural, interdisciplinary collaboration that is simply initiated by these kind of very helpful networking events.

Strategic partnership among global leaders in academia, government and industry is a key to build bridges to creating the momentum needed to transform the future towards women empowerment and breaking any barriers involved. In a global world, the scientific landscape shall advance with an increase in world class research, increased talent, and scientific expertise that meet global needs and give more room to women in leadership.

Prof. Dr. Ghada Bassioni, Professor of Chemistry, Ain Shams University,

Bureau Member (Iupac), Project Manager Energy Efficiency-Accompanying Measures in Public Universities, Supreme Council of Universities (Egypt)

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