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Anyone who thinks magic has nothing to do with science has no idea what sleight of hand so many female scientists have been forced to resort to in the last year. Since the Covid pandemic began, It was very difficult for the researchers to manage several fronts at the same time: work, children, home, sick parents, etc. Imagine a woman, a researcher trying to concentrate on doing intricate calculations on the computer, while her three-year-old son walks around her desk screaming and playing Indian. Or to all those scientists who, before a deadline to present a paperThey also had to help their teenagers with distance learning. In short, a nightmare. Because the magic wand does not exist and the bill that many scientists finally had to pay was quite high. Just take a look at the studies published in recent months to realize that the presence of women in the magazines was very low. Few or few publications can weigh heavily on a scientist’s career.
Three women were among the first to realize that the research activity of many women has suffered an unfair decline: Laura’s Hymn, postdoctoral researcher at the Parthenope University of Naples and associate Inaf, Alessandra rotundi, professor at the same university and associated with Inaf, and Weather in Arianna Piccialli, researcher at the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy in Brussels. The academics analyzed the scientific production of the Italian astronomical community during the first half of 2020 in search of any trace of the unequal division of domestic work between the two genders, exacerbated in the period between March and June by the closure of schools and the absence of compensatory care services. The result, published in a letter to the international community in the magazine Nature astronomy, is dramatically clear: compared to an overall slight decrease in articles published as prepress on the Arxiv platform (the leading public repository of scientific articles) compared to the average of the last three years, there are significantly fewer publications with a first author , while those led by men are even slightly above the average of previous years. “We certainly lived in a particular situation: our work, which is based on collaborations, meetings and conferences, has completely changed in this period, so in our own little way we have suffered,” says Inno.
Researchers found an 8 percent decrease in overall scientific output. “What surprised us is that, while men appear to have been unaffected by the lockdown, with production even increasing by 10 percent, Inno explains, compared to the average, women posted less, hence the decrease. We see that it is due exclusively to the decrease in female production. Our idea is that this can be explained because, as the schools were closed and any type of mobility was impossible, there was no possibility of having babysitters or help from grandparents. all the care of the house and the children fell on the researchers. Female. So the difference in productivity is a kind of mirror of the imbalance in the distribution of family workload between genders in the country, and could constitute a serious obstacle in the process towards gender equality ”.
This gap is also evident in other countries. A report published last May found that women scientists, in Australia, are almost twice as likely to have precarious jobs and therefore more likely to lose their jobs and career opportunities. Last april Elizabeth hannon, deputy editor of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, noted that the number of articles she received from women had dropped dramatically. It was not like that for men. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he commented on Twitter. “I have heard many stories of women who have abandoned projects, who have not been able to collaborate, etc.. It is extremely worrying, especially for philosophy, which already has a lot of work to do on gender equality ”, she says. The British newspaper The Guardian has published a series of iconic stories: Scientists who are too busy with commitments at home have not been able to carry out their research.
“Gender equality is not yet complete, female discrimination exists in a less evident, more subtle and devious cultural root,” she says. Livia Turco, president of the Nilde Iotti Foundation. “In the seventies we fought for women’s rights laws, with the divorce law, the law for the protection of working mothers, equal employment between men and women and many other fundamental achievements obtained thanks to the commitment of women in politics like Nilde Iotti who spent her life for this. Now the female disadvantage – she continues – consists of a glass ceiling in which the achievement of equal rights is prevented due to discrimination and barriers of socio-cultural origin and apparently invisible but insurmountable obstacles of a social nature. We speak of lack of family support, of wage inequality as well as a cultural climate that does not support the advancement of women and this unfortunately also occurs among scientists, despite the fact that science is based on the values of data exchange and collaboration, qualities in which women excel ”. Finally, the president of the Nilde Iotti Foundation concludes: “Thank you to the scientists who were an authoritative voice that helped us through this difficult year. They have shown scientific and human talent. These talents must also be recognized to involve more and more women in scientific research.”.
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