IUPAC’s Global Women’s Breakfast was held on February 16th this year. IUPAC hosts this breakfast annually to celebrate women in science, inspire younger generations, support the professional development of women in science, and to build a global network to close the gender gap in science. WICTO has proudly participated every year by hosting the event in our department.
Usually, WICTO provides a free breakfast to attendees of this event. At the St. George campus, WICTO members make all of the pancakes and provide an assortment of toppings. At the Mississauga campus, WICTO takes over one of their weekly grad breakfasts and incorporates EDI-focused content, while at the Scarborough campus, breakfast is provided in the form of assorted pastries and coffee. The event is attended widely across all three campuses, and there is often an activity associated with that year’s theme. However, for the past couple of years, this event has been moved online due to the pandemic.
This year’s theme was “Empowering Diversity in Science”, so we made a presentation related to this theme hoping to inspire discussion. The St. George and Scarborough campus events were combined into one Zoom event since we were not yet permitted to host in-person gatherings. Those in attendance were included in a gift card raffle. Abbey, our events coordinator, gave a great presentation about how to empower diversity in science, and we had a fantastic discussion afterwards which included both graduate students and professors. Some of the discussion points touched on ways to incorporate science into the classroom (as both a professor or a TA), limitations of NSF-funded ADVANCE initiatives, and how we can improve EDI efforts at UofT.
UTM was fortunately able to hold their event in person this year! Elyse, our UTM rep, gave a presentation about gender equity in STEM to the attendees of that week’s grad breakfast. They were also able to have some great conversations around the topic.
We hope that we can bring this event back in-person next year at all three campuses, continuing with the free breakfast while also incorporating some of the strategies we’ve learned from our online events to encourage better discussion and participation!