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Initiatives that give visibility to women scientists and science communicators are growing

Activities contribute to the debate on gender disparity in academia and change public perception about the female role in research

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Since she was little, Rafaela was interested in science. She enjoyed watching television programs about animals, reading about the subject, visiting museums and experimenting with her mother's plants. Rafaela knew early on who Darwin, Lamarck, Cuvier and Einstein were, great male and foreign scientists. But she wondered: where were the women? The question started to get some answers when she watched the film On the gorilla mountain (Gorillas in the mist), about the American anthropologist Dian Fossey, who dedicated herself to conserving gorillas in Rwanda, Africa, in the second half of the 20th century. The researcher's model in the field moved Rafaela and made her realize that women were in science and that she could be there too one day. Today, Rafaela Falaschi is a researcher at the State University of Ponta Grossa (UEPG), in Paraná, and studies the diversity and evolution of insects.

Rafaela's example demonstrates the importance that representation has for female identification with the role of researchers. Films, cartoons, social media pages and models of scientists in the press are extremely important tools for deconstructing gender bias in science, favoring both the entry and retention of women in scientific careers. In recent years, projects that highlight female participation in science and dissemination have grown in visibility. This is the case of the page “Nina draws scientists” (from English Nina draws scientists) on Instagram, which illustrates current or historically famous researchers, and has more than five thousand followers. Recently, the page has also illustrated scientists engaged in scientific dissemination, such as the biologist Danny Washington, which advocates for marine biology topics on social media. Another emblematic example was the release of the film Stars beyond time, in 2016, addressing a group of black women who worked at NASA in the early 1960s and made a fundamental contribution to space race research.

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Dissemination initiatives about women in science in different media, combining art, creativity and scientific information

But the field of dissemination, like that of science, still faces dilemmas in terms of representation. Since she started working in science communication, journalist Paula Penedo realized that advertising is a predominantly female field. “Communications offices at research institutions are mostly made up of women, specialization and master’s courses in the area have many more female students than male students, and professors are, for the most part, women. But most of the texts we read were written by men, the heads of consultancies were men and the winners of the main awards were men", she says.

The discrepancy pointed out by Paula was the subject of research by Gabrielle Adabo, journalist who defended the masters in 2017 at Unicamp investigating the dissemination of science by women in Brazil. The work of Gabrielle showed that women receive fewer awards than men in the José Reis Scientific Dissemination Award, the main award in the field in the country. There are 29 men awarded and only 10 women. Of these, six won in the Scientific Journalism category, three in Scientific Dissemination and one in the Researcher and Writer category. The pattern is repeated in international awards such as the Kalinga, an award granted by UNESCO for initiatives to popularize science. Of the 16 winners in the last 20 years, only three are women, with the last award to a woman taking place in 2002. It is important to investigate the causes of this pattern. "It may be that women are a minority in the number of registered participants, a fact that I did not raise. But if that’s the case, why do they sign up less?”, asks Gabrielle. According to her, not everything can be considered inequality a priori, but questioning is important to detect inequalities and find ways to combat them.

In addition to the lower representation in senior positions in science journalism and in awards, women are also a minority among the sources interviewed in publicity content. As a way to change this situation, a group of researchers launched the initiative “Request a scientist”. The project works as a resource for journalists, educators, decision makers and anyone in need of a science expert to easily find women researchers willing to participate in reports, conferences and other media events. The search can be done by country, city, area of ​​study and level of training. In Brazil, there are already 208 registered researchers and Rafaela Falaschi is one of them.


Parity in the academic universe

Contact between women scientists and popularizers, who often work simultaneously in both activities, is essential in the defense of greater parity in science. Second UNESCO data, women are a minority in the scientific world, accounting for less than 30% of researchers in the world. In Brazil, the situation is a little better: the report "Gender in the global research landscape", released by scientific publisher Elsevier in 2017, shows that in the last 20 years the proportion of women in the research population increased from 38% to 49%. But general representation hides important differences between areas of knowledge and career stages. The presence of women is generally greater than that of men in the areas of humanities and social services, tending towards parity in biological and health sciences. However, when it comes to engineering, exact and Earth sciences, female participation drops abruptly.

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Total number of women and men working in research in different areas of knowledge in Brazil. Data was collected by combining the name of researchers in their profiles on the scientific platform Scopus with information on names and genders by country (Genderize, NamSor sociolinguistic analysis and Wikipedia name lists). Adapted from the report “Gender in the Global Research Landscape” (Elsevier 2017).

For Carolina Brito, professor in the Department of Physics at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), one of the problems is that from an early age girls do not feel capable of entering areas considered more complex, such as science and, in particular, exact Sciences. One recent study, published in the magazine Science [vol. 355 (6323): 389-391, 2017], demonstrates that gender biases are already present at early ages, such as 6 and 7 years old. "Girls grow up believing that these areas are not for them. So the deconstruction of this model that women are hard-working and nice people, but perhaps not so intelligent, has to be done from a very early age", says Carolina.

Aware of this, Rafaela and Carolina also work on publicity initiatives aimed at female audiences. In addition to registering on “Requisite a Scientist”, Rafaela is co-founder of the website Women in Science, a space for women scientists to tell their stories and discuss their position in the academic world. The idea for the website began with a group of the same name on Facebook, created at the end of 2016 as a way to bring together women who worked in science. The inspiration to expand the idea came from a post in which one of the researchers asked for recommendations on scientific dissemination initiatives about women in science to show to a little cousin. The difficulty of finding websites and initiatives specifically about women bothered Rafaela and her friend Laura Prado, who is a biologist and programmer. Together, they decided to create their own website. "I bought the domain, Laura rents the server and the entire project is out of our pocket. We still don't have sponsorship, we have no idea how to get the means to maintain the project, but we did it and, within a month, the website was ready ", reports Rafaela. Today the site has a team made up of six more women, most of them biologists.

The lack of funding is often a barrier to the implementation of scientific dissemination activities and the role of universities and public notices is fundamental. This was the case with the extension project "Girls in Science", coordinated by Carolina and Daniela Pavani, professor at UFRGS. The project's actions include science workshops and debates on gender issues in public schools in Porto Alegre (RS), as well as the production of films to publicize the presence of women in science and technology careers. In 2013, the project received funding through a notice promoted by Petrobras, in partnership with the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI) and the Secretariat of Policies for Women of the Presidency of the Republic (SPM-PR).

For Carolina, the role of institutional notices is to be a catalyst for ideas. “The seed of Meninas na Ciência was already in our spirit. But a notice like this forces you to sit down and write the project, to assemble a team. It formalizes the project", highlights Carolina. The Carolina team's extension project has the support of infrastructure and extension scholarships offered by the university, but the expansion of activities still requires external complementary resources. "This year there was a notice similar to that of 2013, for which we also submitted a proposal. These financial contributions are really essential for us", she says. In addition to “Meninas na Ciência”, Carolina produces the podcast "Frontiers of Science", in partnership with two other colleagues from UFRGS. The podcast is in its ninth season and aims to debate science topics and processes, in addition to stimulating a critical spirit in its listeners.  

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“Girls in Science” activity at UFRGS, in 2016 | Photo: Reproduction/Girls in Science

Regardless of the form of funding, outreach projects are a way to not only convey information to women and girls, but also to provide role models and empower them. “There are many girls at school who have a natural curiosity, a taste for science, but this is undermined throughout their educational journey. So we want a space that acts not only as a disseminator of science for everyone, but as a space of empowerment, so that undergraduate girls can see examples and know that many of these insecurities are social constructions. We want to inspire mothers and girls to fight for science, to know that they can be scientists", explains Rafaela.


Models in history

In addition to the engagement of current scientists, the historical recovery of women in science is one of the ways to give evidence to these models. Margaret Mee (1909-1988), botanical illustrator, and Bertha Lutz (1894-1976), biologist at the National Museum, are important examples of women who worked in research and also in publicity. In her master's degree at Unicamp, journalist Paula Penedo investigates the role of other less famous botanicals in scientific dissemination. Botany is one of the areas with the greatest presence of women in biology and the debate about the reasons for the greater female presence involves the supposed “delicacy” of the area, which includes working with flowers and variations in aromas and colors. But this is a stereotype that Paula's research tries to deconstruct. "The day-to-day life of botany is nothing delicate, it involves doing field research in often inhospitable places, carrying heavy weight, repetitive and tiring work in the laboratories. So, I believe that the publicity made by these women can serve to show that they They are also there, doing heavy work", says Paula.

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Margaret Mee and one of her illustrations | Source: Pinterest.

Female pioneering in publicity mixes with the feminist movement and the fight for political and social rights. In her master's research, Gabrielle Adabo also showed that at the beginning of the last century there were two groups consolidating themselves with different objectives among Brazilian researchers: on the one hand, scientists concerned with the development and dissemination of science and, on the other, women concerned with the fight for political and social rights. As a result, barriers imposed by gender on Brazilian researchers delayed their engagement in dissemination activities. "I think it's more or less like that video that has been circulating on the internet that shows a race of privileges – each person who had a certain privilege advances two steps in relation to the others; women were a few steps behind men in this race. But they they were there. Today I see a lot of this approach between women and dissemination because of this socially and historically constituted role of women as educators and the very proximity of scientific dissemination with education", says Gabrielle.

The feminist movement has helped to break the close relationship between women's actions and the historical role of educators, bringing the diversity of the female universe to scientific dissemination. An emblematic example is the debate that took place earlier this year around the work of a doctoral student in neuroscience Samantha Yammine, who shares his daily research with more than 30 thousand followers on Instagram. Samantha was harshly criticized by colleague Meghan Wright, who considers that her work documents the stereotype of a beautiful, well-dressed woman, but does not contribute much to overcoming the gender gap in science. The manifestation of the scientific community showed that there is space for different feminine styles both in the scientific environment and in the ways of disseminating science and that media, artistic, institutional and governmental actions need to be complementary. Only with efforts on different fronts will the diversity and strength of women's work in science and communication be duly recognized.

 

 

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