Supporting diversity and encouraging inclusion

The make-up of people studying and working in chemistry in the UK does not reflect that of the wider population, explains Lesley Yellowlees, the immediate past president of the Royal Society of Chemistry. ‘We need to ask ourselves why, and what is it that we are doing that is not encouraging people from certain backgrounds to take up a career in science.’ Promoting inclusion and diversity has been the cornerstone of my presidency, she says.

To encourage and retain a diverse community within chemistry, ‘we have to look at things like unconscious bias, mentoring for our young people, flexibility of working conditions and how best to support everybody throughout the whole of the lifespan of their work’, she says.

The promotion of positive role models is another well-established approach to encouraging diversity within a community, and Lesley herself is an excellent role model for female chemists. She is a professor of inorganic electrochemistry as well as vice principal and head of the college of science and engineering at the University of Edinburgh, and was the first female RSC president.

Lesley, during her presidency, initiated a project called 175 Faces of Chemistry. The RSC is publishing the profiles of 175 diverse chemists on a dedicated website in the run up to the RSC’s 175th anniversary in 2016. ‘I hope that these chemists can be seen as role models,’ says Lesley, ‘and I’m hoping that with 175 different faces, everyone will find someone they can relate to.’

In this article four of the 175 faces of chemistry: an openly gay scientist, a chemistry teacher with mobility issues who requires a wheelchair, a male primary school teacher and a Kyrgyz research fellow, discuss their experiences within the chemical sciences and as role models within the community.