Opening more space for women enriches science – 02/03/2024 – Reinaldo José Lopes

Intelligent, decent and courageous people sometimes do or say really stupid things – “and that’s ok”, as the current phrase on the internet goes. Or not so well, actually.

Amid the pre-pandemic darkness of the Bolsonaro government, physicist Ricardo Galvão, then head of Inpe (National Institute for Space Research), did not bow to the nonsense of the then president, who claimed to see manipulated data on deforestation in the Amazon.

By calling Bolsonaro what he always was —pusillanimous–, Galvão was exonerated. Now president of CNPq, the main federal body that promotes research, the physicist criticized those who call for more gender equality in Brazilian science.

This happened last week, during an event at Unicamp, in which Galvão said, for example, that the Parent in Science movement, aimed precisely at tackling gender inequalities in the area, “gets in the way a lot” by proposing specific measures to support women scientists. He further stated that researchers “who are productive” do not want “paternalistic” treatment. The speech was available on video on the internet, but it was taken down.

One of the main bones of contention comes from before Galvão’s speech – described as “inappropriate” and “inelegant” by himself, in an official note. In an assessment of a researcher’s productivity that was made public at the end of last year, a CNPq reviewer highlighted that the specialist’s pregnancies had probably hindered her performance and that she could compensate for this in the future.

The comment highlighted the fact that, in a scientific career, as well as in the job market as a whole, some are more equal than others, unfortunately. The need for a woman and mother to dedicate herself to her family, and especially her children, is judged as a weak body, lack of focus and inability to deal with career challenges. It’s not hard to imagine that this view is even more prevalent in science, which has traditionally been portrayed as a mix of priesthood and cutthroat competition in the name of “excellence.”

This is, however, a stupid way to deal with the issue. Some things, in fact, are not the responsibility of a research funding agency and depend on structural changes in society, such as a more equitable division of domestic work and child-rearing between men and women. (It is worth mentioning that caring for children is, by far, the most difficult thing in the world, although it is generally not paid work.)

What CNPq and other development agencies can and should do, however, is take into account the specificities of maternal and female conditions, as well as other structural inequalities, when evaluating who is productive.

It would even be an opportunity to deeply review a model that is still very much based on rewarding gross productivity, measured in the number of published studies, and less in quality, impact and intellectual ambition.

A single truly innovative study produced by a mother over a longer period of time may be worth more than ten articles spit out by a researcher who didn’t have to worry about changing diapers.

And there is yet another advantage. Including diverse perspectives in science is a path to producing better science, because it prevents the cognitive biases of an exclusivist subgroup of human beings from being the only glasses with which we try to see the majesty of the facts around us.

Galvão, in fact, showed that he has a courageous appreciation for the majesty of facts. We need to use this courage to go a step further and show that science is broad enough to include everyone.

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