In Brazil, half of the female university students has suffered harassment, and almost 30% of them have experienced sexual violence during the academic life. The alarming figures revealed by the 2015 survey by the Avon Institute / Data Popular show only one side of a cultural model that is reproduced in an environment that should be the place of difference and diversity. Instead of being a plural space, the university also reveals to be the place of the implied prejudice against women with regard to progression in the academic and scientific career, as demonstrated by the debate Women in University and Science: Challenges and Opportunities, held on September 15 at the IEA.

"Much of this discussion is associated with the power of women or with the conflict of power in relation to men and its social, cultural and political implications. In the private and public contexts, women are not willingly admitted in power domains. Even in large democracies of the 21st century, power relates to men," said the lecturer Leila Saadé, president of the RESUFF (Francophone Network of Women Responsible for Higher Education and Research).

The RESUFF's mission is to educate leaders and academics to question male-female inequality at universities, especially in access to positions of responsibility. It has been developing teaching modules on gender that offer training tools for professional and institutional strategies. The agency has also opened a call for proposals for a gender observatory at universities, which will work with a representative of the network in each participating university with the aim of consolidating data and indicators on women's participation in academic life.

As an expert in law and president of the Doctoral School of Law of the Middle East, Saadé addressed experiences in Lebanon and France on the issue of gender in academia and science. She also explored affirmative actions created by the Francophone University Association (AUF), which has been consolidating initiatives to promote women's access to positions of responsibility. The association, founded in Canada, funds university projects of teaching and research, and its headquarters is located in an office of São Paulo State University (UNESP), in São Paulo.

Vera Soares, from USP Mulheres (USP Women), and conferencist Leila Saadé

"We can not want a better world where half the population is in a hidden corner of the planet. If women are struggling to reach the summit of positions of responsibility we are offering a gift to democracy as we strive for the triumph of a set of values that have founded democracies, ie the principle of equal rights and opportunities," she said.

Physicist Caroline Carvalho dos Santos, a professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) and coordinator of the university extension program Girls in Science, participated as a panelist. Moderation was in charge of Vera Soares, from USP Mulheres (USP Women).

The meeting has been organized by the Consulate General of France in São Paulo, the Institut Français in Brazil, USP Women and the IEA.

Shear effect

According to Saadé, 20% of the presidents in French university positions were women in 2008 and recently this ratio has halved. Eight years ago there were 58% of women enrolled in master's and bachelor courses, as well as 48% in PhD courses. Only 23% reached the position of university professor, showing that the higher the career level, the greater the shear effect. "Unfortunately, academia is deeply discriminatory against women and cultivates women's discrimination," she said.

The European average is no exception: only 9% of research management positions are occupied by women and only 11% of them are high academic responsibility positions.

In Lebanon, women represent 37% of academic researchers, and 11% of them work in engineering and technology. "We have asked for a national observatory in Lebanon to define gender indicators and structure inclusion strategies," said Saadé.

The shear effect has deep roots in stereotypes in which unfortunately even women themselves believe and reproduce, she said. "The L'Oreal Foundation has conducted a survey on the view that Europeans have of women in science and revealed that 67% believe that women are not qualified to occupy high positions in science. The reasons given for having that thinking are the lack of perseverance, practical spirit, rigor and scientific spirit, as well as rational and analytical mind. Women have the same view, which is the worst part. It is a universal vision. The same survey has been conducted among the Chinese, who reproduced the same responses. We are forced to admit that cultural factors and stereotypes play an important role in this view of women", she showed.

The researcher believes that it is possible to change that, even if a long way to go is necessary. First, one must create a network that encourages and supports female scientists besides consolidating data and indicators. "There is a lack of indicators. The figures are uncertain and often false. We need surveys on the real situation of women in science and academia so we can create action strategies," she said.

Besides consolidating indicators, the network proposed by Saadé will need to act to "break the vicious circle in which research projects are created and evaluated only by men, and in which only men are accepted."

A survey in France has shown that women coursing the last year of graduation in science had better terms than men and this proves that they have scientific spirit, Saadé explained. "So we need to leave solitude and silence by valuing women, their skills and their ego; give them the opportunity to fall in love with the sphere of science," she said.

Segregation by area

Carolina Brito: "There is a lack of female models in scientific high positions"

Physicist Carolina Brito, a professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), said that women suffer both vertical and horizontal segregations throughout their academic careers. The first one relates to the shear effect, while the horizontal segregation concerns the areas in which women do often not seek for positions due to pre-existing prejudices in career choices.

Brito showed data of the 2006 School Census, in which women were the majority in high school both in enrollment (54%) and as graduates (58%). Women also represented most of the students in Brazilian universities according to the 2012 data of the Anísio Teixeira National Institute of Educational Studies (INEP). However, for each 100 graduate students, 15 graduated in engineering and mathematics, and only five women headed to the so-called hard sciences.

In the case of physics, segregation is even greater, showed Brito. If something like 30% of scientific initiation scholarships in physics go to women, only 15% of PhD scholarships and only 5% of A-level research scholarships remain with them.

Stereotypes, culture, and family and school influences play an important role so that women do not choose a scientific career, believes Brito, who also points to another important trend. "I insist on the lack of female models in scientific high positions. There are very few giving this example. Therefore, women do not see themselves in careers like that," she said.

Moreover, it is necessary to end scientific committees formed predominantly by men. The scientific committee of physics at the National Scientific and Technological Development Council (CNPq), for example, has only 10% of women in its composition. "The pharmacy case is even worse. Although the area has mostly women, the scientific committee at CNPq is 100% composed of men," she said.

The requirements for women are much higher. "In the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, the male presence on the chairs is very strong. But if we analyze the profile of the occupants by choosing the criterion members under 35 years studying PhD, for example, we notice that among men 15% do not have a Research Productivity scholarship (PQ), and only 1% of women do not have a PQ. This shows that the criteria are more restrictive for women," said Brito.

Professor Marcos Nogueira Martins, director of USP's Institute of Physics (IF), showed some figures from a foreign institution to confirm that gender segregation occurs worldwide.

"At the University of Chicago, men make up 87% of the academic body. This is a global phenomenon. But in my academic experience, I do not notice any difference in ability between men and women, and I agree that there is a loss of talent by leaving women out. But it is difficult for a person to get interested in what they do not know or do not understand. Unfortunately, you can not make miracles with the education we have in Brazil," said Martins.

Photos: Marcos Santos/Jornal da USP and Leonor Calasans/IEA

Time in Astronomy was the subject of the conference of Hideyo Kunieda, deputy dean of research and students at Nagoya University (Japan), at the Intercontinental Academia (ICA) on April 21.

Kunieda, who is also professor of the university’s Department of Physics, addressed in particular the advances in the observation of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with the help of X-ray telescopes, his area of ​​expertise.

According to him, this area of ​​research has contributed substantially to the understanding of astronomical phenomena predicted by the Theory of Relativity, such as black holes, the bending of light, and the deformation of space-time in the presence of supermassive objects.

Echoes from the past

“The light of heavenly bodies we see today was emitted long ago. Looking into space is like looking into the past,” Kunieda said, noting that this is due to the huge scale of the universe: “The propagation of light in space is measured in years,” he added.

For the professor, one of the positive aspects of light’s “delay” is to make it possible to study the evolution of the universe over time, from the Big Bang to the present day.

According to the Big Bang theory, dominant among scientists, the universe came about 13.7 billion years ago, from a huge explosion. Planets, stars and galaxies were like splinters that progressively moved away from the center of detonation, causing the universe to expand continuously.

“The universe was fairly uniform after the Big Bang. But then the fragments grew and the stars and galaxies came about. We currently can observe a broad variety of objects,” said Kunieda.

According to him, to observe faint, lighted objects in space, with little glare, is like observing the early stages of the Big Bang, when the fragments began to take shape. “To look at distant galaxies is to see how these galaxies were in the early universe.”

The idea of a moving and expanding universe, a notion that underlies the Big Bang theory, was strongly influenced by Hubble’s Law, according to which there is a relationship between a galaxy’s distance from Earth and the speed with which it is moving away: the farther, the faster.

The law was formulated by observing a phenomenon known as “redshift,” or changes in the frequency of the waves that make up the spectrum of light caused by the relative velocity between the observer and the source of emission. If the object moves away from the observer at high speed, low frequency waves become more visible and their color is shifted toward red; and if the object is approaching, the high frequency waves become sharper and the color is shifted to violet.

Thus, it was ascertained that most galaxies display a redshift and that the greater the deviation, the greater the distance between said galaxies and the Earth. “By Hubble’s law, the time axis is converted into depth in space,” summed up Kunieda.

Black hole

Predicted by the Theory of Relativity, a redshift also occurs in the presence of a strong gravitational field. Kunieda’s research on active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is based on observations of this phenomenon through images captured by X-ray telescopes.

AGNs are supermassive (with mass up to 1 billion times that of our Sun) and very bright (up to 100 billion times brighter than the Sun) celestial bodies.

According to the professor, astronomical observations using different techniques suggest that AGNs harbor black holes – regions in space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. Formed from the gravitational collapse of a star, known as supernova, black holes are the result of the curvature of space-time, the system of coordinate that underlies the Theory of Relativity.

“Near a black hole, space-time is more curved. Because of this, time seems slowed down and the light emanating from that region seems redder,” Kunieda said, referring to the gravitational redshift.

He explained that the brightness of AGNs does not derive from the black holes themselves, which are invisible, but from the radiation produced by the accretion disk – the agglomeration of particles and gases surrounding supermassive objects. Because they have a very powerful gravitational field, black holes suck in all surrounding matter. And when sucked in, matter does not fall into the hole in a straight path, but rather in spirals, like a whirlwind, giving rise to a disk that gradually adds mass to the central object.

According to Kunieda, the heat produced by matter moving toward the gravitational body radiates in the disk’s surface, which is visible. The redshift occurs under the action of gravity, which causes an increase in the length of the light waves. He said this phenomenon is the curvature of the light under the effect of gravity, as predicted by the Theory of Relativity.

The professor’s observations involve accretion disks in the center of host galaxies. He said images obtained by him and other researchers point to the existence of supermassive objects – in this case, black holes –, as determined by the Theory of Relativity.

The Milky Way

In Kunieda’s assessment, certain images of the Milky Way provide evidence that black holes exist. Obtained through infrared radiation or x-rays, these images show at first a common galaxy, with no central bright object, and therefore devoid of an active nucleus.

However, stressed Kunieda, one cloud of particles at one end of the galaxy displays an unusual light pattern, as if it was lit from below and reflected the light emitted by an object in the vicinity. According to him, this is what astronomers refer to as “reflection nebula.”

“By measuring the distance between the reflection and the light source, one can calculate how long ago the light was emitted. The center of the galaxy was 10 million times brighter 350 years ago,” he said, noting that the reflection nebula provides evidence that the center of the Milky Way was once an AGN.

“It’s a kind of astronomical archeology. It allows us to look at past activities in the center of the galaxy,” he compared. "In this case, the time axis is converted in a two-dimensional distribution."

Supernovae

According to Kunieda, observations of supernovae (explosions that herald the beginning of the death of stars) have also contributed to our understanding of the history of the universe.

The professor explained that stars, like our Sun, are bright because of the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium, a process that results in loss of mass and the formation of an increasingly dense core.

When the fuel runs out, the core of the star shrinks and becomes a compact object, with an extremely strong gravitational field. The star then begins to attract all matter to its center, up to a point where the high density becomes unsustainable and the supermassive body collapses, expanding matter in a great explosion – the supernova. What remains of this collapse gives rise to black holes.

Kunieda stressed that “the records of these explosions are very useful to understand the evolution of supernova remnants that we see today.” The remnants are nebulae formed from material ejected during the gravitational collapse, which speed away from the core. “In this case, the time axis is converted in a two-dimensional intensity distribution,” he said.