• Question: because you are female, did you ever feel discriminized in any way about your career?

    Asked by Hira to Sheona, Giuditta, Flavia on 7 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Flavia de Almeida Dias

      Flavia de Almeida Dias answered on 7 Nov 2015:

      Hello!

      The question about females in areas considered predominantly masculine (like fundamental science) is quite a tricky one. We have evolved a lot in the past decades trying to make the field less discriminatory and more attractive to females, but of course the current situation is not at total equality. Yet!

      In my personal experience, I have never been discriminated directly by any of my employers, or direct co-workers whom I was developing projects with – I demonstrate my competence while performing my job, and there is nobody who can say I do something worse or better just because of my gender. However, the world is still a sexist place, and incidents have happened to me which were not caused by my direct co workers, but were caused by people in my workplace (Universities I studied/worked at, laboratory). When the incident was serious enough, I had support from my employers and the HR of where the incident happened to report and follow the appropriate procedure.

    • Photo: Giuditta Perversi

      Giuditta Perversi answered on 9 Nov 2015:

      The issue of “Women in STEM” is a really complicated one, from some point of view.

      I do think that things are getting better with the years, and I am lucky enough to never have been subjected to a straight on “you can’t do it because you are female”. However, it happened in a couple of occasions that I had to stand my ground on statements like “but obviously men are better at programming/maths and stuff like that” given as the absolute truth, which…urgh…cringy…

      Also, the evidence of gender inequality it’s still there in terms of relative numbers. All the groups I’ve been in were predominantly male, even though I was not the only female; you go to conferences and you see the same pattern with speakers or the research group that the speaker cite. It’s not crippling, but you still notice it if you pay attention.

      However, I think that the route is set and the more generations we change the more we can make the science field, and every other field, only a matter of skills and achievements, not of gender.

Comments