WOMEN SCIENTISTS IN THE BRAZILIAN CHEMISTRY

Brazil’s gender gaps numbers are scarce in the field of chemistry. Thus, the motivation of this work is to perform a data survey considering all levels of the academic career and per Brazilian region. The data collected shows a general trend observed in all scenarios, whereas the higher the career level the lower the number of women inserted. Women dominate in the early stages of the scientific careers, such as postgraduate programs (52%) but become minority (42%) when they get positions as university professors. The disparity is higher at positions of great recognition, e.g., member of the Brazilian Academy of Science (18%) or the highest level of CNPQ research productivity fellowship “1A” (12%). Other career indicators such as research grants approval, authorship in recognized international journals and in highly cited articles authored by Brazilian scientists, show low female representativity. Leadership positions in scientific societies and funding agencies are alarming (6%), where many organizations never had a woman president. The world needs more female references in science and surely Brazil has many great women in the field of chemistry that deserve recognition. The present study sheds light to the awareness of the Brazilian scenario.