{"id":421476,"date":"2022-01-19T13:00:43","date_gmt":"2022-01-19T16:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=421476"},"modified":"2022-01-19T14:01:42","modified_gmt":"2022-01-19T17:01:42","slug":"women-and-their-disciples","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/women-and-their-disciples\/","title":{"rendered":"Women and their disciples"},"content":{"rendered":"

A diagram published on social media has sparked a debate about a type of contribution made by women scientists that is rarely addressed in gender studies: their role in advising students and training new generations of researchers. The image, which resembles a treetop seen from above, is formed by graphs\u2014structures made up of nodes connected by lines\u2014whose branches represent the networks of members of academia trained by 50 Brazilian female researchers. The work was produced and promoted on Twitter by immunologist Helder Nakaya, a senior researcher at Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein and exposed a dense and prolific academic legacy: the number of researchers these women directly advised (students) and indirectly taught (future generations taught by their students) totaled 32,000 researchers.<\/p>\n

Some of the researchers mentioned in the project and their students shared and celebrated the results on social media. \u201cIt’s a privilege to see how many academic grandchildren and great-grandchildren I already have and how many great students I was able to train in research on the chemistry of natural products,\u201d says Vanderlan Bolzani, from the Institute of Chemistry of Araraquara at S\u00e3o Paulo State University (UNESP), who has 169 academic descendants spread over three generations. She points out that academic genealogy data reveal how the work of women scientists, despite being influential, is not reflected by other indicators. \u201cTo train good researchers, it is necessary to carry out quality science, guarantee funding for projects, establish international collaborations,\u201d she states. Bolzani observes that, even though they train many people, women continue to struggle to obtain recognition, and few of them reach high positions. A 2018 study showcased that, of the 518 full members of the Brazilian Academy of Science (ABC), only 14% were women. Of the 67 deans linked to the National Association of Directors of Federal Institutions of Higher Education (ANDIFES), only 13 are women.<\/p>\n

Bolzani, who is also a member of the FAPESP Board of Trustees, believes data on the contribution of women to the training of human resources are especially relevant at this time when scientists are discussing how to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). \u201cGender balance is one of the goals to be achieved,\u201d she points out.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was surprised by these results, because I hadn\u2019t realized I had trained so many students,\u201d ponders Belita Koiller, from the Physics Institute of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). The first female physicist elected as a full member of the ABC and winner of the 2005 L’Or\u00e9al-UNESCO For Women in Science Award, Koiller has 11 direct descendants and 124 indirect descendants. The most important part of this legacy, she stresses, is the quality of the researchers she has mentored. \u201cI tried to train better scientists than myself. I made sure they all studied abroad,\u201d she shares. She regrets that physics lags behind other fields when it comes to its capacity to attract more female talent and enable them to flourish. But she believes that public recognition\u2014such as the L\u2019Or\u00e9al-UNESCO International Award she received and the L’Or\u00e9al-UNESCO-ABC Program that she helped implement in Brazil in 2006\u2014break some of these barriers, giving more visibility to women scientists and reducing disparities.<\/p>\n

The Acacia Platform shares studies on academic genealogy and is referenced by researchers interested in tracing their contributions<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Claudia Bauzer Medeiros<\/a>, from the Institute of Computing at the University of Campinas (IC-UNICAMP), was told about Nakaya\u2019s work by a former student. \u201cI was flattered to be in such good company,\u201d she said. She is still in touch with most of her students. \u201cOf the 70 master\u2019s and PhD students that I advised, I follow the careers of about 50. Last year, they held an online birthday party for me. People logged in from the United States, Australia, and England. I am proud to have trained quality scientists who now work in industry, academia, and research centers around the world,\u201d says the researcher, who has 325 direct and indirect descendants. The first female professor in Brazil to get a PhD in computer science abroad, she encourages more women to enter the male-dominated field and, while president of the Brazilian Computer Society, she implemented initiatives to attract talent. \u201cToday, nearly 20 years after its founding, the SBC has a permanent program\u2014Meninas Digitais (Digital Girls)\u2014through which thousands of young women aged 7 to 18 all over Brazil learn to write code, build robots, and develop projects with help from hundreds of dedicated teachers. It is a joy to have contributed to this.\u201d Considering the reality of the situation in this field, she managed to attract a reasonable number of female students: of the 20 PhD students she trained, five are women; among her 53 master\u2019s students, 16 are women.<\/p>\n

Nakaya first decided to carry out the study out of sheer curiosity. He explored an academic genealogy database created by researchers at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC) as a means to facilitate a researcher discussion group via WhatsApp. He then traced the family tree of 19 scientists, showcasing how much they had contributed to the training of new researchers. He was criticized for how few women he included in his sample\u2014of the 19 researchers, only two were women: geneticist Mayana Zatz<\/a>, from USP, and biochemist Helena Nader<\/a>, from the Federal University of S\u00e3o Paulo (UNIFESP). He noted that their contribution was not far behind that of the men, including deans and leaders of large research centers. \u201cSo, I decided to gather data exclusively about women,\u201d he shares. His choice of 50 female scientists followed somewhat subjective criteria. He looked up the names of researchers who were still alive in records like the one from the Brazilian Academy of Science and included some that were familiar to him. He was careful to include names from the human and social sciences, such as demographer Elza Berqu\u00f3<\/a>, from the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP) and UNICAMP, and economist Maria da Concei\u00e7\u00e3o Tavares, from UFRJ. \u201cAgain, I was criticized, but for the women I failed to include. Everyone could think of an important name that had been left out,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Nakaya\u2019s study was made possible thanks to a UFABC project that has, since 2016, enabled the mapping of academic genealogy based on data extracted from the Lattes curricula platform (see <\/em>Pesquisa FAPESP issue<\/em> n\u00ba 249<\/em><\/a>). The Acacia Platform, which got its name from the shape of the branches of a tree native to Australia, includes data on 1.2 million Brazilian academics, listing their number of descendants, how many generations they have trained, and the number of \u201ccousins,\u201d or researchers who share the same academic \u201cgrandparent.\u201d \u201cWe want to expand the data and the ways they can be searched on the platform,\u201d says Jes\u00fas Pascual Mena-Chalco, from the Center for Mathematics, Computing and Cognition at UFABC and coordinator of the project. \u201cToday, there is information available on the individual level. The idea is to enable analyses involving universities, investigating how they were influenced by other institutions\u2014like UFABC, whose researchers come mostly from USP\u2014or pointing out areas and fields of knowledge that have provided human resources to other areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

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L\u00e9o Ramos Chaves | Nationalacademies.org\u2009\/\u2009Humanrights\u2002| Miguel Boyayan\u2002| Roberto Barroso\u2009\/\u2009Ag\u00eancia Brasil<\/span><\/a> Vanderlan Bolzani, Belita Koiller, Claudia Bauzer Medeiros, Maria da Concei\u00e7\u00e3o Tavares, and Helena Nader: descendantsL\u00e9o Ramos Chaves | Nationalacademies.org\u2009\/\u2009Humanrights\u2002| Miguel Boyayan\u2002| Roberto Barroso\u2009\/\u2009Ag\u00eancia Brasil<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

He shares that the database has supported studies on academic genealogy and has been referenced by researchers interested in tracing the impact of their work on generating human resources. \u201cThe platform allows for various interpretations about academic careers, as illustrated by the study on the 50 Brazilian female researchers,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Nakaya\u2019s study has generated further research. The immunologist has partnered with the Institute for the Appreciation of Education and Research in the State of S\u00e3o Paulo (IVEVESP), a non-profit organization established by professors and scientists to create or improve the profiles of the 50 female researchers on Wikipedia. To achieve this objective, he intends to seek the help of each researcher\u2019s academic descendants. The Wikipedia entries are written using reliable information available online, and the biologist\u2019s goal is to produce pages that support the researchers\u2019 profiles. \u201cAnd we would like their former mentees to help us narrate the contributions of these scientists,\u201d he says. Physicist Helio Dias, director of IVEVESP and a retired researcher at the USP Institute of Physics, plans to hire fellows to help conduct interviews and gather data on the women being profiled. Yvonne Mascarenhas<\/a>, from the USP S\u00e3o Carlos Institute of Chemistry\u2014one of the 50 researchers on the list\u2014is also willing to help.<\/p>\n

The initiative resembles a project carried out by British physicist Jessica Wade, from Imperial College London, with the goal of addressing the lack of female profiles on Wikipedia. Alongside journalist Angela Saini, Wade started a project in 2017 called \u201cOne scientist per day on Wikipedia\u201d\u2014an effort to expand the number of biographies of women researchers from different countries. They have already written about hundreds of women (see <\/em>Pesquisa FAPESP issue n\u00ba 276<\/em><\/a>). In at least one case, the project being developed in Brazil overlapped the British one. Helena Nader, from UNIFESP, was one of the women profiled in English by Wade and Saini. \u201cJessica Wade participated in a 2019 debate with me at the Museum of Tomorrow, in Rio de Janeiro, about women in science. She looked for my Wikipedia profile and couldn\u2019t find it. So, Angela Saini wrote one,\u201d recalls Nader. According to the Acacia Platform records, Nader already has 497 descendants, 66 of whom are direct descendants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Study maps how Brazilian scientists contribute to the education of new researchers","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":420761,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[226,215],"coauthors":[98],"class_list":["post-421476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-policies-st-en","tag-education","tag-scientometrics","keywords-gender"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421476"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":421719,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421476\/revisions\/421719"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421476"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=421476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}