ISC Presents

"I think there's a real danger that a disproportionate one-size-fits-all lockdown response to COVID is actually going to have bigger health and social and economic impacts down the line (in parts of Africa)."

In this episode of ISC Presents: Global Science, we join Professor Melissa Leach, the Director of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS). She is a Fellow of the British Academy and was awarded a CBE in 2017 for services to social science.

She was the lead social scientist on the UK and WHO Ebola scientific advisory committees, 2014-15, and the lead author, UN Women World Survey on the Role of Women in Economic Development, 2014.

In this episode, we talk to Cara Maesano, an environmental epidemiologist and air pollution researcher. Cara is part of the C40 project through the women4climate mentorship program. C40 is an organisation of cities around the world that is committed to taking action to mitigate carbon emissions to tackle climate change, and create resilient cities.

In this episode, we speak to Lydia Sosa Vargas, a CNRS researcher at Sorbonne University in Paris, France. Originally from Mexico, she obtained her PhD in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the UK. In 2012, she began her postdoctoral work in Japan at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST-Kansai), developing new liquid crystalline materials for photovoltaic applications. In 2015, she joined the Polymer Chemistry lab at the Paris Institute for Molecular Chemistry (IPCM) at Sorbonne Université as a postdoc before being recruited as a researcher for the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in 2017.

In this episode, we speak to  Gloria Bonder, who is the Director of the Department of Gender, Society and Policies of the Latin American Postgraduate Institute of Social Sciences (FLACSO Argentina). She coordinates two regional programmes including the UNESCO Regional Chair on Women, Science and Technologyin Latin America and the e-learning master’s programme on Gender, Society and Public Policies.

In this episode, we speak to Vivian Etsipia Boamah, a Senior Lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology Kumasi (KNUST) and fellow of the L’Oreal UNESCO for Women in Sub Saharan Africa. Her areas of research are focused on antimicrobial resistance surveillance, mechanism of microbial resistance, and transfer of resistant genes from the environment/animals to humans. Vivian speaks out about the role of education and encouraging young children to be interested in the sciences, especially in countries where non traditional roles for women are against cultural norms.

In this episode, we speak with Dragana Ilic, a member of the International Astronomical Union. Ilic was awarded the L’Oréal-Unesco “For Women in Science” Serbia National Fellowship in 2014,  and is an Associate Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Belgrade. As an accomplished scientist and a mother of two, Ilic speaks out about stars, galaxies far and wide, and  the criticism, both implicit and explicit, that she receives as a woman in her field.

 In this episode, we speak with Catherine Jami, Secretary General of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. (IUHPST) Catherine speaks out about the evolution of discrimination in the science field,  the need for women to support each other in science systems, and the specific challenges she has faced as a woman over the course of her career in mathmatics. Catherine encourages young girls interested in STEM not to give up - science needs them. International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology was a supporting applicant of the Gender Gap Project - a global approach to addressing and reducing the gender gap in STEM.

This first episode also discusses the Gender Gap In Science project, which involved numerous international science unions and organizations including:

• the International Mathematical Union (IMU), through its Committee for Women in Mathematics, 
• the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), 
• the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IUHPST) 
• Gender INSITE, and other supporting international science unions and organizations.

To find out more about the Gender Gap in Science project, and its recently published report, click here. 

In this episode, we talk to Lingadahalli Subrahmanya Shashidhara, an Indian developmental biologist, geneticist and a professor of Biology at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune. 

Shashidhara has served as Vice President of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) in the past and is currently Secretary General of International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS) and is steering an international project on Climate Change Education. He is a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) and an Associate member of European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO).

Recorded at UNESCO during the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, we discuss gender equality in science systems, through the voices of six women researchers in STEM from around the globe. We listen to the achievements, perils, challenges and aspirations women face in an effort to empower, connect and inspire present and future generations of female scientists.

Listen and subscribe to our new podcast ‘ISC presents’ – our 15-minute episodes providing listeners with a melting pot of insightful discussions and thought-provoking debates through the voices of guests and experts of the international scientific community.

For more information on ISC Presents, visit council.science/podcast

ISC Presents: Women in Science was produced by the International Science Council and Studio Ochenta.

The International Science Council is a non-governmental organization with a unique global membership that brings together 40 international scientific Unions and Associations and over 140 national and regional scientific organizations including Academies and Research Councils.

The vision of the Council is to advance science as a global public good. Scientific knowledge, data and expertise must be universally accessible and its benefits universally shared.