The world population is growing rapidly, which requires unique solutions to assure safe water, food and energy for all. Concurrently, the numbers of women and ethnic minorities entering Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields in the US is stagnant. An inclusive and diverse workforce is required in order to find sustainable ways to address these challenges by thinking globally but working regionally. This presentation will review where we are in terms of workforce development and provide examples of how we are teaming together to provide safer water, healthier food, and off the grid energy in rural areas of the Southwestern United States.
In recent years, China's chemical industry has made great development, which greatly promotes the national economic power and living standard but also faces a series of new challenges, such as environmental problems. In order to resolve these problems fundamentally, Chinese scientists have been undertaking research in the area of green chemical engineering for many years and achieved great progresses. In this presentation, several typical green chemical processes related to the Chinese resources characteristics and environmental requirements were presented, i.e. the C2/C4 processes for green methyl methacrylate production, CO2 green utilization by convert to dimethyl carbonate and ethylene glycol, green processes for gas (CO2, SO2, H2S, NH3) separation and recovery based on ionic liquids, green solvent-mediated extraction technologies, as well as utilization technologies of cellulous. Afterwards, the perspectives and development tendencies of green chemical engineering in China were proposed, and the solvent and process innovation for developing sustainable industrial technologies in China will remain a key point in the visible future.
The Korean Society of Rheology is a small academic society mostly focusing on fluid mechanics of non-Newtonian fluid. The number of member is about 1000 but a real acting member is about 200. In the society, a diversity committee was organized recently in 2018 during annual spring meeting of the society, 15 female rheologists and 3 student members were involved in the committee. The aims and main role of the committee is a build-up of network of female rheologists and rheologist candidates and share the information.
The challenge to organize the committee is a lack of self-motivation of each female rheologist to join the committee. Most of them believed that being a part of the committee is nothing to do with progress in academic activity or already gave up to make a progress in research even though they do not develop how to keep up a professional career as scientist in their own way. Right! the aims and role of the committee of “build-up of network” is not directly related to the academic activity. However, as long as the society plays a role to providing a playground for academic activity, the committee is a good way for female rheologist to gather or to share research and life along with the society of itself. Especially, female scientists working on a similar research area shares several hindrances from custom, life, and research is useful to find identity as well as to achieve successful career.
The situation of women in fields related to natural sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) is one of the significant research topics of the 2000s. The main argument behind this agenda is that some professions traditionally considered to be suitable for women and some for men, due to gender stereotypes. It is also argued that provided the necessary social and economic conditions, women can accomplish as well as men do in mentioned fields. Engineering is one of these professions which is traditionally attributed to men. Same as other countries in the world, more than a quarter students are female in STEM in university. All of them can find a job in industry. However, 20 years after graduation, two out of ten women are leaving STEM careers despite STEM jobs being some of the fastest growing and highest paying around the world. One of the biggest factors that sees women leaving their STEM careers is a realistic work-life balance. More than 20% of women quit their jobs when they have children, as they cannot afford daycare or a full-time nanny. It is why flexible working conditions have become a non-negotiable point for women engineer. In this presentation, the current situation and future outlook of woman engineering in Taiwan will be reported.
The Society of Chemical Engineers, Japan (SCEJ) was founded in 1936. In 2002, we joined the Japan Inter-society Liaison Association Committee for Promoting Equal Participation of Men and Women in Science and Engineering (EPMEWSE) as one of the twelve initial members. EPMEWSE grew into the association of about 100 academic societies in STEM field, whose main roles are large-scale surveys on gender equality, proposals and requests to government, and symposiums. In 2003, the committee for gender equality was established in SCEJ. Since then, we have carried out various activities, such as “female engineer forum” in annual academic meeting, networking women engineers, dissemination of information on diversity by our journal and website. The number of female members of SCEJ has increased slowly but steadily and its ratio has doubled during the last 15 years. Recent technological breakthroughs symbolized by AI, IoT and robotics are significantly changing the human society beyond technology. At such times, it is increasingly important to maximize the capabilities of diverse members as an essential element for active innovation. In SCEJ, we share this vision and encouragement of constructive female participation is one of the main pillars of our strategy toward sustainable future. In this paper, an overview of the present situation of gender equality in Japan and the challenges for diversity promotion in SCEJ is presented.
