Women’s Increasing Responsibilities in IUPAC since 1975
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Nicole Moreau
Nicole J. Moreau <
nj.moreau@free.fr > was IUPAC president in 2010–2011. Prior, she has been a member of the Bureau since 2000 and a member of the Executive Committee since 2006. After her involvement in IUPAC and till recently, she was a member on the Executive Board of ICSU, now known as the International Science Council.
Abstract
IUPAC was founded in 1919, but it was in 1911 that the International Association of Chemical Societies, IACS, considered as the precursor of the Union, was created. A look at the picture of the third meeting of IACS, held in 1913 in Brussels [1], makes obvious the absence of any woman—and the quasi-absence of any man without a beard or a moustache! A look at the population of women in IUPAC fifty years later showed the same situation, although by then beards and moustaches had lost ground. A thorough examination of the composition of IUPAC’s Divisions and Committees reveals a few women members before 1975 [2]. In the 70s and early 80s, the presence of a few women become noticeable. The names of these women, with their position and years of membership are tabulated here in chronological order by their initial membership on Divisions or Committees. Until 1990, all women are included in the table. From 1990 to 2010, only those with Titular Member (TM) status are listed, and after 2010 only those involved in the Bureau (BU), either as division president (DP), standing committee chair (SCC), or elected member (EM) and officer.
In 1975, the only woman member of an IUPAC committee was Ursula Hohacker, from Germany. She was a National Representative (NR) on the Committee on Teaching of Chemistry (CTC, after 2002 CCE, Committee on Chemistry Education) from 1975 to 1985. Two other women were also present before 1980, Irene Dilaris from Greece, also an NR on CTC, from 1976 to 1985 (although she appears to have been an observer in 1965), and Eloisa Mano, from Brasil, an NR on the Macromolecular Division (Div IV, known today as the Polymer Division), from 1979-1985.
Between 1981 and 1990, we count a dozen women, of whom Mary Good, from the USA, became President of the Inorganic Chemistry Division (Div II) from 1981 to 1985. The next woman President of a Division was Irina Beletskaya from Russia, member from 1985 and then President of the Organic Chemistry Division (Div III), from 1989 to 1991.
In the early 2000s, more than two dozen women were either TM or member of the Bureau, while it is only in the 2010s that we find the first women Presidents of the Union, Nicole J. Moreau from France, 2010-2011, and Natalia P. Tarasova from Russia, 2016-2017. The President (P) term is two years, which follows a 2-year term as Vice President (VP) and precedes a last 2-year term as Past President (PP). In that same decade, 10 women became Presidents of Divisions, I (Physical and Biophysical Chemistry), III (Organic and Biomolecular), V (Analytical), VI (Chemistry and the Environment), and VII (Chemistry and Human Health), or Committees, CCE (Education), COCI (Industry), and CPCDS (Publications and data standards). This is a significant change and improvement, raising the percentage of women on the Bureau from 4 % in 1998 to 15 % in 2008 and to 25 % in 2018. Of the 44 women mentioned, about a quarter of them are engaged in matters of teaching and education, a rather traditional female niche. The next most common areas are organic and biomolecular chemistry (Div III) and chemistry and human health (Div VII). This is a striking contrast with the first female presence inside IUPAC, Ellen Gleditsch, who was a delegate for the International Commission of the Tables of Constants (1921-28) before joining the Commission on radioactivity after WWII [3].
Meeting of the IUPAC Executive Committee at the headquarters of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in Moscow 1988 (16-17 May). Front row from left: Valentin Koptyug (USSR), IUPAC President, Yves Jeannin (France), Vice President, Mary Good (USA), and Ramachandra Rao (India), Past President. Middle: Norman Sheppard (UK) and Sho Ito (Japan). Back row: Thomas West (UK), Secretary General, and Mo Williams, Executive Secretary (EC member present in part at the 111th EC meeting in Moscow but not on the photo: Anders Bjorkman (Denmark), Treasurer). Courtesy Yves Jeannin.
The table lists the names of women present in Divisions, Standing Committees, and Bureau with their position and years of presence. Membership on the Bureau are shaded per position. See text for details (abbreviations not cited in the text: CR or CHEMRAWN, AM or Associate Member, and CPEP or the Committee Printed and Electronic Publication, which in 2014 became CPCDS, the Committee on Publications and Cheminformatics Data Standards).
| Name | Position | Entity | Period | Country |
| Ursula Hohacker | NR | CTC | 1975-1985 | Germany |
| Irene Dilaris | NR | CTC | 1976-1985 | Greece |
| Eloisa Mano | NR | IV | 1979-1985 | Brasil |
| Mary Good | DP | II | 1981-1985 | USA |
| EM | BU/EC | 1985-1993 | ||
| Marguerite Rinaudo | AM | IV | 1981-1985 | France |
| Mirna Micač Dević | M | VII | 1981-1985 | Yugoslavia |
| Marjorie Gardner | M | CTC | 1981-1989 | USA |
| Aleksandra Kornhauser | M | CTC | 1981-1989 | Slovenia |
| Evdokia Sokolowskaya | M | CTC | 1981-1989 | Russia |
| Maroulio Talieri-Gianopoulou | NR | VII | 1983-1985 | Greece |
| Edith Jarisch | NR | CTC | 1983-1985 | Austria |
| Claudine Noël | TM | IV | 1985-1993 | France |
| Irina P. Beletskaya | TM | III | 1985-1993 | Russia |
| DP | III | 1989-1991 | ||
| Elisa Pestana | M | CCE | 1996-2005 | Portugal |
| Wendy Warr | Chair | CPEP | 1998-2003 | UK |
| Ingrid Meisel | TM | IV | 2000-2001 | Germany |
| Tania M. Tavares | TM | VI | 2000-2003 | Brasil |
| Norma S. Nudelman | TM | III | 2000-2003 | Argentina |
| TM | CR | 2004-2007 | ||
| Silvia Braslavsky | TM | III | 2000-2003 | Germany |
| Rita Cornelis | TM | VII | 2000-2003 | Belgium |
| DP | VII | 2018-2019 | ||
| Sandra Rondinini | TM | V | 2000-2001 | Italy |
| Nicole Moreau | EM | BU | 2000-2013 | France |
| EM | EC | 2006-2013 | ||
| P | 2010-2011 | |||
| Elsa Reichmanis | TM | IV | 2000-2001 | USA |
| EM | BU | 2006-2013 | ||
| EM | EC | 2008-2013 | ||
| Ruth M. Lynden-Bell | TM | I | 2002-2009 | UK |
| Lisa McElwee-White | TM | III | 2002-2005 | USA |
| Lida Schoen | TM | CCE | 2002-2011 | |
| Laura McConnell | TM | VI | 2004-2007 | USA |
| DP | VI | 2014-2015 | ||
| Jytte Molin Christensen | TM | VII | 2004-2005 | France |
| Maria Fatima das Graças Da Silva | TM | III | 2004-2007 | Brasil |
| Mary J. Garson | TM | III | 2004-2016 | Australia |
| DP | III | 2014-2015 | ||
| EM | BU | 2018-2019 | ||
| Natalia Tarasova | TM | CCE | 2004-2007 | Russia |
| EM | BU | 2008-2019 | ||
| EM | EC | 2010-2019 | ||
| P | 2016-2017 | |||
| Myunghyun Paik Suh | TM | II | 2006-2009 | Korea |
| Janine Cossy | TM | III | 2006-2009 | France |
| Hemda Garelick | TM | VI | 2006-2009 | UK |
| EM | BU | 2016-2019 | ||
| Monica Norberg | TM | VII | 2006-2009 | Sweden |
| Eva Ǻkesson | TM | CCE | 2006-2013 | Sweden |
| Maria van Dam-Mieras | EM | BU | 2006-2013 | Netherlands |
| Maria F. Camões | TM | V | 2008-2015 | Portugal |
| DP | V | 2012-2013 | ||
| Françoise Pontet | TM | VI | 2008-2011 | France |
| DP | VII | 2012 | ||
| Mei-Hung Chiu | Chair | CCE | 2012-2015 | China Taipei |
| EM | BU | 2016-2019 | ||
| Helen Lawlor | Chair | CPCDS | 2014-2019 | USA |
| Margaret Brimble | DP | III | 2016-2017 | New Zealand |
| Angela K. Wilson | DP | I | 2016-2017 | USA |
| Carolyn Ribes | Chair | COCI | 2018-2019 | USA |
The charts show the increasing fraction of women (in teal) involved in the IUPAC Bureau since 1998.
A closer look at the first two women who were Presidents of Divisions
Mary L. Good was born in Grapevine, Texas. Both her parents were teachers; when she was 11 they moved to Arkansas, where she received her PhD in 1955. She then spent 25 years teaching and conducting research in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. In 1972, she became the first woman to be elected to the board of the American Chemical Society. In 1980, she left academia for industry. At that time, she also started to hold government positions, serving in such roles under the administrations of four Presidents: Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. In 1993, she left industry to become the Under Secretary for Technology in the Department of Commerce. In IUPAC, she was President of the Inorganic Chemistry Division for two biennia, in 1981-3 and 1983-5; she then was elected member (EM) on the Bureau and directly served on the Executive Committee (EC) from 1985 to 1993.
Irina P. Beletskaya was born in Leningrad (now St Petersburg). No information about her parents has been found. She graduated from the Department of Chemistry of Lomonosov Moscow State University, where she received her PhD and then became a professor. She served in the Organic Chemistry Division of IUPAC starting in 1985, acting as President in 1989-1991; she then served in the Committee on Chemical Weapons Destruction Technology (CWDT). In 1992, she became a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She had a purely scientific carreer. 
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Nicole J. Moreau <nj.moreau@free.fr> was IUPAC president in 2010–2011. Prior, she has been a member of the Bureau since 2000 and a member of the Executive Committee since 2006. After her involvement in IUPAC and till recently, she was a member on the Executive Board of ICSU, now known as the International Science Council.
References
1. See B. Van Tiggelen and D. Fauque, The Formation of the International Association of Chemical Society, Chem. Int., 34/1 (Jan.-Feb. 2012), 8-11, see p.10. https://doi.org/10.1515/ci.2012.34.1.810.1515/ci.2012.34.1.8Suche in Google Scholar
2. Membership sources in Comptes rendus des Conférences internationale de la chimie, années 1920-1975.Suche in Google Scholar
3. See A. Lykknes, this issue, p. 26.Suche in Google Scholar
©2019 IUPAC & De Gruyter. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. For more information, please visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead - Full issue pdf
- Special IUPAC100
- The Union in the Interwar period
- 1919-1939: The First Life of the Union
- The International Research Council and Its Unions: 1919-1931
- Ernst Cohen and the Challenge of a Truly International Union
- IUPAC in Brussels in 1921: A Historical Photo
- Pioneers of Japanese Participation in IUPAC
- After WWII: a fresh start
- London 1947: A Caricature
- Rebuilding IUPAC after WWII
- Ellen Gleditsch: Woman Chemist in IUPAC’s Early History
- IUPAC Expansion from 1957 to 1975
- The First Russian President of IUPAC: Victor Kondratiev
- IUPAC Engagement in the Instrumental Revolution
- IUPAC’s achievements and actions
- A History of CNIC
- IUPAC and the Naming of Elements
- A Century of Nomenclature for Chemists and Machines
- The mole and IUPAC: a brief history
- Stepping in the new century
- Women’s Increasing Responsibilities in IUPAC since 1975
- The Historical Archives of IUPAC at the Science History Institute
- Not an Epilogue, but a Commencement!
- Mark Your Calendar
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead - Full issue pdf
- Special IUPAC100
- The Union in the Interwar period
- 1919-1939: The First Life of the Union
- The International Research Council and Its Unions: 1919-1931
- Ernst Cohen and the Challenge of a Truly International Union
- IUPAC in Brussels in 1921: A Historical Photo
- Pioneers of Japanese Participation in IUPAC
- After WWII: a fresh start
- London 1947: A Caricature
- Rebuilding IUPAC after WWII
- Ellen Gleditsch: Woman Chemist in IUPAC’s Early History
- IUPAC Expansion from 1957 to 1975
- The First Russian President of IUPAC: Victor Kondratiev
- IUPAC Engagement in the Instrumental Revolution
- IUPAC’s achievements and actions
- A History of CNIC
- IUPAC and the Naming of Elements
- A Century of Nomenclature for Chemists and Machines
- The mole and IUPAC: a brief history
- Stepping in the new century
- Women’s Increasing Responsibilities in IUPAC since 1975
- The Historical Archives of IUPAC at the Science History Institute
- Not an Epilogue, but a Commencement!
- Mark Your Calendar
