Women in chemistry

These activities accompany the EiC article Equality, education and science, which is part of the Sustainability in chemistry collection and covers UN Sustainable development goals 4, 5 and 10. This resource focuses on Goal 5: achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, but can be tied to Goal 4: inclusive quality education and Goal 10: reduce inequality.

Sustainability in chemistry

This resource accompanies the Education in Chemistry article Equality, education and science where you will find more support and suggestions for how to connect your current chemistry teaching with UN sustainable development goal 5: achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.

Teacher notes

Linking a human face to science and telling the stories of what chemists have achieved provides learners with fantastic role models and can really bring home the difference that science can make. In this activity, learners will research a female chemist or scientist and create either a poster or online profile. They can then plan a social media or blog post to accompany their scientist’s profile.

The twelve women in chemistry poster is a good place to start. You can print out the poster, make it in to 12 cards and give each group one chemist to research. Another poster highlighting 100 women in chemistry gives profiles of chemists working here and now. And the L’Oreal-UNESCO for women in science programme offers more information about contemporary women scientists.

Choose from the ativities and guidance in the download including:

• A women in chemistry poster template
• A Wikipedia page template
• Tips to write an engaging tweet
• How to create an inviting Instagram post
• Steps to write a brilliant blog post

The profiles could be used as part of a display and/or put into schemes of learning so they can be referred to when a related topic is taught.

Careers

Link this activity to careers and show your learners the different opportunities available to them. Use our Future in chemistry resources, try the interactive careers game and watch the Challenging opinions to connect to the ideas of achieving inclusivity and equality highlighted by Goals 4, 5 and 10. 

Link to other goals covered in this series, such as 1: no poverty, for more context and to explore the links between the content you are teaching and the challenges faced by those living in poverty.