LATAM: Female Scientists in Search of Equal Opportunities

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 12 1998 (IPS) - The hurdles women face in the world of science will be the focus of ‘Women, Science and Technology’, a regional forum hosted by Argentina and sponsored by the UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

The Latin American forum, which will put forward gender proposals for next June’s Global Conference on Science in the 21st Century, will run on Oct. 21-23 in San Carlos de Bariloche, a mountain resort town 2,800 kms southwest of Buenos Aires. More than 250 scientists, researchers and representatives of public, private and international institutions are expected to attend.

Similar regional fora will also be held in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Mediterranean basin.

According to a report by UNESCO, women account for 30 percent of scientists in the exact and natural sciences worldwide, but occupy less than 10 percent of top-level positions, where scientific policy is defined – a pattern that holds true in Latin America.

A study carried out by the Network of Gender, Science and Technology in Argentina found that 93 percent of primary school and 67 percent of high school teachers were women, compared to 31 percent of university professors.

And among university professors, 58 percent of women are assistant professors, while only 26 percent become full professors.

In Argentina’s governmental Council for Scientific and Technological Research, 60 percent of research assistants are women, but due to a number of reasons they are left behind along the way: only eight percent of senior research fellows are women.

Cristina Zurutuza, executive secretary of the committee coordinating the forum, told IPS that the chief obstacle for women was their double workday. “In the workplace we are at a disadvantage, because the standards for competition are male, and we have the extra burden of domestic duties. And inequality is even worse in the technological-scientific arena.”

Women postpone their scientific careers for marriage and children, or opt for disciplines where they are more comfortably “accepted,” as science teachers for example.

Argentina’s Council of Scientific and Technological Research itself discriminates when it comes to providing opportunities to scientists: if a couple apply for fellowships, the husband is awarded a full grant and the wife a half-fellowship, based on the assumption that the two will be sharing living expenses.

The arrangement does not take into account the possibility of divorce, or the inequality of the situation.

Zurutuza said the regional forum would debate the question of women’s access to scientific knowledge.

“I believe women have a different angle on things because we were socialised differently, and are better able to detect aspects neglected by the dominant discourse, such as the environment. In other words, we have a socially conditioned sensibility.”

The Bariloche gathering will seek to determine the proportion of women in the sciences in Latin America. It will debate whether a female approach to science exists, and discuss the discrimination and prejudice suffered by girls and women in scientific education and careers, and public and private initiatives and programmes to further women’s participation in scientific disciplines.

UNESCO and the Argentine Technological Fund, which have teamed up to organise the forum, start from the supposition that women have made significant advances in education – even at a university level, where women comprise the majority of the student body – and in employment.

But they recognise that there are still major gaps in the opportunities available to men and women in terms of professional development in science and technology. Men are promoted faster, and are responsible for defining research policies worldwide.

According to the Argentine programme providing links to scientists and technicians living abroad, 78.5 percent of scientists who emigrate are men.

Several studies indicate that few efforts are made to awaken girls’ interest in science, which is explicit or implicitly discouraged by stereotypes held up, for example, by the absence of illustrations of women in textbooks.

The stereotype associating science with masculinity is an unconscious link that steers many adolescent girls away from science and technology.

UN studies show that high school science teachers interact more with boys than girls, dedicating more time to encouraging and correcting boys, while being more lenient in grading girls, who many teachers believe will never be able to stand out in those areas.

The final declaration of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro suggested that one of the causes of today’s environmental imbalances could be women’s scarce participation in public debates on development.

The declaration concluded that the questions of environmental clean-up, pollution, deforestation, alternative energies, health services or biodiversity required the active participation of women in both the diagnosis and resolution of problems.

The results of all of the regional fora will be submitted to the “Global Conference on Science in the 21st century: A New Commitment”, to take place in June in Budapest.

At the Conference, which will discuss the most general issues concerning science, women will attempt to influence the debate with their proposals for increased female participation in the next millenium.