Women in Science: Brazil is third in female participation in science

Science

Data is from a Dutch agency report.

In the last 20 years, the proportion of researchers who subscribe to scientific publications in the country jumped from 38% to 49%. Brazil is third on the list of places with the highest female participation in science, which includes 18 countries plus the European Union. The data is contained in the Elsevier-Bori report Towards gender equity in research in Brazil, launched this Friday (8).

Elsevier is a Dutch company that produces scientific and technical content, while the Bori Agency’s mission is to enhance scientific evidence through dissemination to the press. The report resulting from this partnership mentions that Argentina and Portugal occupy the first places in the ranking. Both have a majority (52%) of women as authors of the articles.

What was observed to carry out the analysis was the Scopus database, using the Elsevier tool. The resource is capable of making a gender cut, in a binary way, that is, with a range limit.

Also according to the survey, the growth of women’s participation in scientific production was also seen, during the period analyzed, in the areas called STEM (acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, in English). In this case, the percentage was 35% in 2020 and increased, in 2022, to 45%. The report also records that, in these areas of knowledge, there has been a slowdown in the increase in female researchers’ participation since 2009-2010.

Despite advances in STEM, there are still challenges to overcome. One of them is to achieve more balance regardless of the researchers’ experience. This is because, as the report produced highlights, as the career progresses, what is seen is a reduction in the presence of women.

In the period from 2018 to 2022, women with up to 5 years of experience were authors or co-authors in more than half (51%) of the publications. The share drops to 36% when checking its existence among authors with more than 21 years of experience in research.

Another fact that highlights the need to think about measures to reduce gender inequality concerns the preponderance of men in certain areas. From 2018 to 2022, there were three fields in which women made up a fifth or slightly more of that, mathematics (19%), computer science (21%), and engineering (24%).

In relation to innovation patents, men continue to accumulate many more rights than women. According to the report, there was stagnation in the level of female participation in the last 15 years, when the proportion varied from 3% to 6%. When the inventors who take credit for creations are men and women, the percentage rose from 24% to 33%, from 2008 to 2022.

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