RIGHTS-LABOUR: Argentine Career Women Face Obstacles

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 27 1998 (IPS) - Women bent on a career in science or technology in Argentina face greater difficulties than their male counterparts and, as a result, remain a minority in the higher echolons while forming the majority of workers in research and teaching.

These were some of the conclusions of a study conducted by the Argentine Network on Gender, Science and Technology which brings together women seeking to detect and eliminate gender bias in their academic work environments. The Network aims to stimulate young women to take up vocations traditionally considered “masculine”.

Network coordinators found that many women over the age of 50, had paid a high price to obtain a top position in their scientific careers – such as working twice as hard, sacrificing motherhood and marriage, or simply being forced to accept serious discrimination.

“Behind every one of these women’s stories is a systematic pattern of discrimination, of which many were unaware. When they did become aware of it, it was already after they had suffered setbacks,” said philosopher Diana Maffia, one of the Network’s coordinators.

The Network encountered obstacles even in carrying out its study. “Because it is not considered relevant to gather statistics based on sex, we had to improvise almost home-made methods to determine how many women were in different carreers, institutions and positions,” said Maffia.

In the end, the study found that women represented 93 percent of grammar school teachers in Argentina and 67 percent of high school teachers, but compromised only 31 percent of university faculties. At the same time, women occupied 58 percent of adjunct positions, the lowest category at universities, while men occupied 74 percent of the highest positions.

There never has been a woman rector of the University of Buenos Aires, the largest in the country, and there have been only a handful of women deans. One of them is the dean of the School of Pharmacy, Juana Pasquini, who acknowledged that she had to postpone marriage until she was 40 and she did not have children, because she had to channel all her efforts into her career, a sacrifice not required of men.

Pasquini recalled one incident when at a meeting of deans, a panel of judges had to be chosen. She, as the only woman, was “invited” by the rector to pull a name out of a bag, a gesture which is usually assigned to children, because they are considered to be incapable of cheating.

A similar pattern of discriminationwas found at the National Council on Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET), the most important state-supported system which finances 97 percent of the scientific research that takes place in Argentina.

At CONICET, 60 percent of the researchers in the category of “assistants” – the first step in the hierarchy – are women. But at the higher levels, women only comprised eight percent of the total.

Proportionately, fewer men enter the CONICET system, but they are more likely to get to the top of the hierarchy. “Women drop out as they begin to have children, because they prioritize their families, their homes and their husbands’ professional progress,” Maffia said.

In interviews gathered by the Network, Martha Fernandez, a 58- year-old physician, said that she built her career during a time there were few women in the unversity, and she graduated at the same time as the man who later became her husband.

They began their careers at the CONICET together, they achieved the same position, and they decided together to apply for a scholarship to study abroad. They both got scholarships, but he received full funding while she only got half as it was decreed a couple “could survive with a scholarship and a half – although he was thje one to get full funding,” she recalls.

While they were abroad, they had a child, and it was Martha who took him to the laboratory during the first year, even though her husband had the same position. Upon returning to Argentina, they both had accumulated points, but he was awarded a category three levels higher than hers.

Sociologist Catalina Wainerman was surprised to learn that Martha Fernandez had gone through the same thing she did.

Wainerman and her husband both got CONICET scholarships to study abroad, but she was given only half the money of that given her husband. “I never understood why we never got the same amount of money, even if it was less for each, but at least the same amount,” she said.

Maffia says that the CONICET – which has never had a woman president – does not have explicit rules that discriminate against women. Nevertheless, women do not receive health insurance for pregnancy nor maternity leave, a factor which discouraged some women from pursuing careers, and other from pursuing motherhood.

The Network’s coordinators – who are all married and have children – stressed that women scientists realize that they shouldn’t give up motherhood, but rather work towards removing the biases that marginalize them.

Many of those who chose to be mothers – like astro-physicist Gloria Dubner – said that although it was very difficult, her children were not raised by an “absentee mother.” Nevertheless, she recalled that many times she had to stay at work for 12 hours and she could not do it, though her husband did when he was required to.

The women of the Network held a series of workshops at grammar schools and technical high schools. There, they discovered that in the experience of the laboratory, teachers would stimulate boys’ curiosity and expect more from them than from girls.

For that reason, the Network wrote a proposal that won a prize from the United National Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in 1997. The proposal was titled “Women Citizens for the Next Century.”

The proposal consisted in stimulating vocations for the few girls who choose technical schools in high school, and developing positive discrimination programs to facilitate their access to jobs.

According to Evangelina Sacerdote, an 80-year-old physician, that would have been been a more than a dream when she was younger. She studied in Italy, in a high school for girls that did not allow them to apply to the university. So she decided, together with her cousin, to study all the high-school subjects of the boys’ high school. After less than a year, she sat for the exams to be be admitted into medical school.

Her cousin is Rita Levi Montalcini, Nobel Prize winner in Medicine in 1986. But Evangelina was forced to emigrate in the 1930s, together with her husband and three children. When she arrived in Buenos Aires, nobody would validate her degree.

“They wanted me to go through grammar school and high school, and after that the university, all over again. In the end, because I had done laboratory work, they let me work with rats, but I never got to work with patients, which was what I really liked”, she says.

Today, Evangelina continues to work in cancer research.