Working Women and Science

Today, 8th of march of 2010, and as a little tribute to all these women who work and have worked in Science, I recomend the reading of this report titled "Women in Science" which has been recently published by the European Comission from the Office in Luxembourg for Official Publications of European Comunitites,in 2009.

Amongst the forty women mentioned here are philosophers, doctors, teologists, entolmologists, astronomers, matematicians, physicists, biologists, historians, computer programmers, economists, pedagogists, chemists, professors, engineers, zooologists, toxicologists, pharmacologists, botanists, veterinary surgeons, physiologists, and in most of the cases, they work in more than two fields of work and include more than a dozen of nobel laurates.

As the foreword says..."Invisible glass ceiling still hinder the progress of bright women.Europe still underutilises women scientists in the research domain, particularly in the so-called "hard science" and in leadership positions and the scientific comunity remains male-dominated". And the society in general we could add.

"This situation can not be allowed to persist....Women and men are equals and hence deserve equal opportunities .Europe is facing numerous economic and social challenges, including increase global competittion, recession climate change and ageing population.These will require all of its reserves of creativity and innovation to overcome "

But this report tries to fill the gap inside our knowledge on Scientists and It does, indeed, some justice in gender equality giving us all this information.We must work much harder than we are used to, just in order not to be waiting for parity 2000 years more to be recognised, like Hypathia of Alexandria (quite popular now since we have seen Amenabar's film Agora). That is the reason why a toolkit like the one which has been published in 2009 by the Gender in EU-funded research.