To celebrate International Women's Day, we spoke with two employees from the FCCN unit of the Foundation for Science and Technology, who work in one of the areas where there is still a long way to go to achieve equal representation between men and women.
According to the International Labour Organization, in Portugal in 2020, only 38% of people graduated in STEM areas – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics – were women. Furthermore, according to a study by McKinsey, in 2023 only 22% of European women held technology-related positions.
Faced with this path still to be taken to eradicate inequalities, science managers at the FCCN unit Filipa Pardelha and Susana Caetano shared their testimony about what it's like to be a woman in STEM fields.
The reasons for low female representation
For Filipa Pardelha, the main reason for this difference in representation between men and women that still persists in STEM is “historical legacy of the association of STEM professions with men and the difficulty in changing mentalities, as well as the time needed to achieve them.”
Revealing optimism regarding this topic, Filipa says she believes that “The political focus on gender equality, as well as campaigns where the visibility of women in STEM is shared with society, will be very important in changing this paradigm.”
When asked about the same topic, Susana Caetano highlights that the motivation for this inequality”begins in education from 0 to 5 years old, it involves a lack of role models in everyday life, a lack of incentives during school, and finally, a great deal of complacency.” “It continues to be easier and more natural for women to take on the role of caregiver rather than risk new professions,” she reinforces.
Picking up on this topic, Susana recalls three women who inspired her to enter the STEM field: “Marie Curie, Ada Lovelace and Carolina Beatriz Ângelo, because they had the courage to leave their comfort zone and give their best”.
When asked about her influences, Filipa Pardelha admits that she chose this field for the continuous learning it offered and out of curiosity. However, she also mentioned examples of women who are part of STEM history and who have inspired her, also highlighting: Marie Curie, "for her dedication to research in the fields of physics and chemistry, as well as the impact she created so that future generations can continue to dedicate themselves to these topics."
It also highlights “Rosalind Franklin and her lack of recognition when the Nobel Prize was awarded to her colleagues James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins for the DNA double helix.”
For you, this example reveals the difference between men and women in STEM. “That's when I realized the importance of the resilience necessary to achieve recognition and the consequent ability to continue research and the search for knowledge by women in this area”, he concludes.
Finally, Filipa Pardelha rounds out the list with a more direct inspiration: one of her undergraduate professors, Leonor Cancela.It marked me with the desire to do more, to know more, to interconnect knowledge from different areas with the aim of reaching explanations and solutions to existing issues, as well as the pleasure in doing so.”
Being a woman in STEM is…
To conclude their testimonies, the two FCCN collaborators completed the sentence “Being a woman in STEM is…”. If for Susana Caetano “is challenging!”, For Filipa Pardelha, it's "having the ability to reinvent yourself in the face of each challenge. It's also a continuous pursuit of knowledge with the purpose of innovating and solving problems, positively impacting the future."
Filipa did not fail to call for action from everyone: “It is the responsibility of each of us to demystify the existing assumptions within society, especially among the youngest, both girls and boys, so that they grow up without the existence of these ideologies and thus leverage change in society.”
