“Our goal is to find you in classrooms and laboratories, first as students and later also as teachers; we cannot deprive society of half of its talent.” This was the firm statement made this Monday by the rector of the University of Vigo, Manuel Reigosa, at the welcome event for a group of students who took part in the School of Telecommunication Engineering during the events commemorating February 11, the International Day of Women and Girls in Science—a date that brought to the campus around a hundred third- and fourth-year secondary school students from four schools in the Vigo area.
Under the general title They Do Science and Technology and for the third consecutive year, a group of senior researchers, with the collaboration and involvement of students from different degree programs and the Equality Unit, organized multiple workshops aimed at capturing the attention of these young women and gradually awakening in them the desire to pursue one of these fields in the future. “It is an idea that arose spontaneously from established researchers, a kind of intergenerational solidarity initiative to contribute a grain of sand in the fight against gender gaps,” emphasized the director of the Equality Unit, Águeda Gómez, who expressed her interest in seeing the initiative continue to grow in future editions.
Reigosa: “We are quite surprised by the lack of scientific vocations and, especially, technological ones among women.”
Alongside the rector and the director of the Equality Unit, Soledad Torres, a lecturer and coordinator of the workshops at this center, also welcomed the students. “We need your perspective on science and technology, and for you yourselves to contribute to creating that science and technology that we so greatly need,” emphasized Torres, one of the main driving forces behind this initiative. “We are quite surprised by the lack of scientific vocations and, especially, technological ones among women. You must be aware that you are capable—you are just as capable as, or even more capable than, men,” the rector insisted, also referring to the lack of female talent in positions of responsibility, something he hopes will change. “For now, there are still few women rectors, but this has to change, and I hope that soon half of university leadership positions will be held by women,” he stressed. “What we need is not to lose talent. At present, degree programs such as Computer Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Telecommunications Engineering, Aerospace Engineering… which have a bright future and will offer a great deal of high-quality employment, are increasingly losing appeal among women. This greatly surprises us, because these are professions where there is absolutely no negative environment regarding gender issues,” the rector emphasized.
From the perspective of Vitoria Alonso, a Technology teacher at IES Rosais I, the real problem behind the lack of vocations lies not so much in the field of science as in that of technology, something she mainly attributes to girls’ lack of contact with the world of technology until they are already too old. In her view, “Technology is a subject that is only taught as a compulsory course in the second and third years of secondary education, so until they are 13 or 14 years old, they have not had any technical subjects, whereas from an early age they are exposed to content related to science and biology.”
At this school, two workshops were organized: one on programming Lego Mindstorms robots and another in which the participants were challenged to program a small video game. Organized into small groups, all the students took part in both workshops. Among them were Soraima Pacini, Laura Cascallana, Eva Collazo, Laura Andreu, and Sheila Núñez, third-year secondary school students from IES Rosais I. “We want to see what kind of things are done in these degree programs to find out if we like them when we have the opportunity to study them,” said Collazo moments before starting the workshop. In Cascallana’s case, she is certain: “What I would like to study is Aerospace Engineering.” The rest of her classmates are still unsure: Chemistry, Journalism, Fine Arts… are some of the alternatives. “There are many open doors; the difficult part is choosing,” another student commented.
13–14 years old, the key moment to choose between sciences or humanities
In the Experimental Sciences Building and at CINBIO, multiple workshops were also organized. In this case, the activities were coordinated by Professor Verónica Salgueiriño, from the Department of Applied Physics.
“This initiative, already known internationally, reached me three years ago and I found it really interesting because it is true that we have a deficit of girls in science, largely due to the fact that society steers them towards other fields,” the lecturer explains. “It is important to bring this type of initiatives to them so they can see that they will have no problem if they decide to pursue a career in science,” Salgueiriño stressed, also emphasizing the importance of starting this kind of activities as early as possible. “It is very difficult for them at this age to know what they want to be, but at least they should have a foundation to rely on when making the decision of their life,” the researcher added.
At the School of Industrial Engineering, this was the second year in which the workshops were organized. “The truth is that the girls are very enthusiastic, and compared to last year we modified the workshop program to make them as practical as possible,” explained Professor Ana Mejías, the coordinator of these workshops at the center.
“This year we changed our approach and placed greater emphasis on presenting real applications and working in a simple way with technologies so that they can see that all of this is achieved through an engineering foundation,” Mejías stressed. Infrared thermography, 3D design and prototyping, and the Formula Student project were the main themes of these workshops. “They are 3rd-year secondary school students who are at the exact moment of choosing between sciences or humanities, and not having a clear understanding of the range of studies they can consider often leads them to dive directly into one field simply due to lack of awareness,” the deputy director of the center emphasized.
Activities were also held at CIM-UVigo.
The Marine Research Centre of the University also joined this celebration with a visit from a group of students from IES Vilalonga, who first attended a lecture by Alba Sousa, communications officer of the Faraxa Association for the abolition of prostitution and collaborator in the awareness project “Iguala na Diferencia: a matter of social justice,” and then took part in a guided tour led by the technicians working at the centre. In addition, they also had the opportunity to learn about the work being carried out by researchers Estefanía Paredes, from the Cryopreservation Laboratory; Tania Tato, from the Ecotox group; and Tania Ballesteros, who explained a project studying the biology of the sea squirt.
During their stay at ECIMAT, the students learned about and came to understand the silence that many female researchers have suffered throughout history, the current situation of women in the workplace and in science in particular, and reflected on equal opportunities, the glass ceiling, and the prejudices that still need to be fought against every day, by both women and men, in order to improve social and working conditions and work towards a science without inequalities.
