Women in science: an investigation on gender mainstreaming in scientific policy

• Grant number: 19/08097-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2019
• Status: Discontinued
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Education - Fundamentals of Education
• Principal Investigator: Ana Maria Fonseca de Almeida
• Grantee: Natália Mattos Pereira
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Educação (FE). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The last decades witnessed the unprecedented development of initiatives focused on decreasing gender inequality in different dimensions of social life. Many of them were directed to the scientific space. Initiatives to abolish the barriers to the participation of women in science can now be found in all continents. Preliminary study of the scholarly literature on the subject has shown that these developments are closely related to the work of individuals that act in the national space and also in international agencies as UNESCO and many others. Who are these individuals? What resources do they employ in their efforts towards creating policies to achieve gender balance in science? These are some of the questions that this research aims to answer by studying a specific case - the STEM and Gender Advancement project (SAGA) - launched in 2015 by UNESCO with the mission to provide governments and policymakers with tools to formulate initiatives for decreasing the gender gap in science, technology and innovation in all levels of research and education. This study will be carried out through the analysis of documents from UNESCO, published résumés and biographies and interviews with relevant actors, which will make it possible to identify individuals who participated in the development of the SAGA, to analyze their personal and professional trajectories, as well as to understand the role they played in it, the strategies they employed and why they could do so. It is expected, as a result, to offer a contribution to the sociology of activism, in particular, of the activism of specialists who circulate in the international space working to fight the gender gap in science.