Women have made up only 36% of CNPq PQ scholarship holders for 20 years – 01/03/2024 – Science

That childcare has a disproportionate burden on women, affecting their professional careers, is already known — not surprisingly, the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2023 went to Harvard professor Claudia Goldin for studies that expose this problem.

Recognizing this imbalance may be the first step towards gender equality at work, but it is not enough: concrete actions are lacking, according to scientists who have studied the topic for years.

Last week, the case of professor of the humanities course at UFABC (Federal University of ABC) Maria Caramez Carlotto, who had her productivity grant from CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development) denied, had repercussions due to the discriminatory nature of the opinion . In the letter, which is anonymous, the evaluator said that “your pregnancies [provavelmente] hindered these initiatives [pós-doutorado no exterior]which could be compensated in the future”.

The researcher told Sheet that she was “incredulous and outraged” when reading the excerpt mainly because it was a notice sensitive to this issue, and yet she suffered gender-based violence. “I was shocked because, in 2023, after everything we have achieved, an opinion like this comes, without filter.”

The organization published a clarification note stating that it regretted what had happened, but justifying that the letter was from an external consultant and that it “will instruct its body of reviewers to pay more attention”.

Even admitting that there was a failure in the procedure, the entity still has a long way to go when it comes to gender equity.

The CNPq productivity grant mechanism (PQ) works as a bonus for those researchers who stand out in their respective areas of knowledge. The evaluation follows several criteria, including the number of scientific articles produced in recent years.

There are currently 16,108 scholarship holders of this modality in the country, out of a total of 109,548 teachers, according to postgraduate data from Capes (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel, linked to the Ministry of Education), which is equivalent to less than 15% of them . Excluding senior fellows, not included in the analysis, 15,850 remain. Of these, 5,642 are women (35.6%), and the remaining 10,208 (66.4%) are men.

The data, up to July 2023, was collected by Parent in Science from the CNPq base through the Fala.br platform. Looking at the distribution by area, exact sciences and engineering concentrate the smallest number of women (around 20%), while health and linguistics, literature and arts have the highest rates (more than 50%).

For Fernanda Staniscuaski, biologist and founder of Parent in Science, women are impacted in their scientific productivity during motherhood, and there is a lack of concrete actions to deal with this, such as creating an institutional policy and the inclusion of the maternity and parenting clause in notices.

“People confuse equity, evaluating in the same way, with equality. Today we have a third of the CNPq area committees, which evaluate scholarship holders in the country, with clauses that address maternity in scientific notices. It is up to the committees evaluators include or not, when it should be a top-down decision”, he says.

Anthropologist Débora Diniz, professor at UnB (University of Brasília), said it is necessary to look at this data on maternity in science and create clear guidelines. “What to do with this information? If so much is expected from publication [para um pesquisador], so it is so much less? Can it be expected, for example, that researchers who are mothers do internships abroad having had children? This is, in fact, a false question,” said the researcher.

Carlotto said he intends to appeal the decision, something that is the right of all researchers who have a request denied, mainly because they do not feel that there was adequate technical judgment, as their project was praised and positively evaluated by the first reviewer.

In response to the report’s questions, the CNPq press office informed, by email, that the reviewers are “high-level specialists in their respective areas of knowledge, generally scholarship holders” from the organization and that “all reviewers are expected to , as well as members of area committees, have their conduct governed by legal precepts […]and not being compatible with any form of discrimination”. They also said that they will develop a specific Code of Ethical Conduct for reviewers.

Staniscuaski sees progress in recent years, especially with regard to the creation of secretariats aimed at dealing with issues of diversity and inclusion in science, but complains about the delay in implementing policies to promote equality.

“There is always a justification that the judgment [dos editais] It is in scientific production, which is a numerical indicator. But that’s why we need to challenge this concept, which in the case of PQ scholarship holders is very strong, because whoever judges is also a scholarship holder”, he said.

According to Diniz, dozens of women reported to her that they had received opinions similar to Carlotto’s — which shows that the problem is structural, and not an isolated case. “There was a lack of training, and I’m not saying it’s the solution to discrimination, but it’s one of the mandatory steps in the reflection process”, she adds.

Physicist and professor at UFRGS (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul) Márcia Barbosa explains that this is yet another example of dozens that are collected and demonstrated in scientific studies proving gender inequality in science.

The numbers, therefore, speak for themselves to exemplify the so-called “scissors effect”, where at each level in the scientific career the number of women, black, indigenous and LGBTQIA+ people falls — they are around 50%, even more, among students degree, but reach less than 20% in top positions.

The causes are multiple: from the lack of opportunities, to the evaluators’ biases —whether conscious or not—, the weight of domestic work and even the psychological and moral damage and sometimes harassment suffered, leading many people from these groups to give up on research. .

According to her, the opinion received by Carlotto reflects the prejudices still present in society and which need to be addressed through policies, but also education. She cites a study by her and her student that found that women in physics make fewer applications for PQ grants in relation to their presence in graduate school.

Another study, also by her, shows that at least half of the researchers at UFRGS have already suffered moral harassment. “I don’t think it’s any different here than other universities in the country,” she says. Therefore, it advocates the creation of codes of ethics and conduct between scientific societies and universities.

For Diniz, as it is a scientific body, the CNPq must be based on evidence to create policies, and these make the gender disparity clear. “Like any measure, it will have costs, from financial to political, on power structures, because it affects the privileges of those who are also judges.”

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