This day seeks to raise awareness about the difference in access to science between genders. At IBioBA, more than 66% of the scientific staff are women.
The General Assembly of the United Nations declared on February 11 the International Day of Women and Girls in Science “in order to achieve full and equal access to and participation in science for women and girls, and further achieve gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls”.
For Susana Silberstein, independent researcher of CONICET and group leader of Molecular Mechanisms Involved in the Signaling of CRH Receptors of IBioBA, “it is important to raise awareness about the role of women in science and in all activities. Women historically have had fewer opportunities and we have occupied far fewer spaces in the hierarchy of science than men”.
According to data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, less than 30 percent of researchers in the world are women. At CONICET, 53 percent of the researchers and 60 percent of the fellows are women. And, at the Biomedicine Research Institute of Buenos Aires (IBioBA, CONICET – Partner Institute of the Max Planck Society), more than 66% of the scientific staff are women.
“It is essential to make visible the role of women in science. Many times inequality is not visible because access to the lowest categories is equitable, but in the hierarchical positions men predominate. The scientific career is a race against time, especially when you decide to have children because you necessarily have to stop your scientific production for months”, says Florencia Fernández-Chiappe, PhD fellow of CONICET at IBioBA.