Science in Italy: Still a Land of Conflicts for Women.(DWpress) Flavia Zucco - Biomedical Technologies Institute, National Research Council, Rome, Italy. According to S. Harding, there usually is an evolution from the question of "gender in science" to the question of "science in feminism".In Italy we followed the same pathway, starting in the '80-'85 a struggle against the exclusion/discrimination principle in science workingplace and careers, and proceeding, in the '90-'95, to a critic of science and a search for alternative approaches to the traditional gender-biased one. With respect to the first phase, it should be mentioned that the available data are mainly due to a sort of side-work done by professional women scientists, who have devoted themselves to this study. Two surveys have been published, concerning relatively small samples, but representative of the public research in Italy, from the University and the National Research Council. Both of them date back to the '87, but the picture they give us has not, since then, changed much. From the data of the two reports, it appears that women are scarcely represented in the directive roles, or in those involving economic and/or political power. It is also worthwhile to underline that 25% of the women scientists are not married and that 23% of the married ones are childless. Finally, most of them came from the middle-upper social class. Moreover, when asked about expectation and investment in their scientific work, women and men give different answers. Practical constraints, mainly due to the family, play a significant role in these differences, but also some sociological and cultural ones, related f.i. to the lack of models or to the influence of gender-related stereotypes. The following differences have been identified concerning women's work in men's laboratories: - usually they are more cautios with regard to really innovative fields; - theyprefer holistic and general approaches to the extreme specialization; - they feel more responsible for their research and its possible outcome; - they do not like competition and therefore tend to prefer, in general, well established fields to new (and risky) ones; - they publish less than male colleagues, and this is not only due to the family burden. All these aspects are interrelated and may find explanations in the previously mentioned stereotypes, as a product of a century old culture, as well as in the actual research environment. The essential point concerns the question if these characteristics must be regarded only as an handycap, or may become, duly analized and exploited, a tool for a gender reoriented science, and for a more "humane" science. A closer analysis of women attitudes at work, allows us to proceed to the second phase, i.e. the question of the approach of women, and in particular of feminists, to science. Most of the italian women scientist have not been involved in the feminist debate. This could possibly be due to the liberal cultural background of the scientific institutions in Italy, with respect to the conservative one of other workingplaces. However, small groups of women scientists, which have met regularly in Bologna, Torino and Rome in the last few years, have been involved in the more general discussion going on at large between women in Italy, dealing with modern science and its bioethical implications. Simplifying, the ecofeminists are against hard technologies, and ask urgently for a "sense of limit" to be applied to science, while the radical feminists speak about a feminist science, where even the neutrality of the scientific method is under scrutiny; they do not reject those technologies which may increase the women freedom. But, beside the extreme and more sophisticated attitudes, we may say that women are very well aware of the burden deriving from the cultural heritage and of the obstacles they have to face in making their way out in science as well as in society. Since a real change in the women position in science is not yet recorded, we have still to fight: it is a shared opinion that an increased presence of women in science will cause a revolution in the scientific world, not only by changing its structure and organization, but also by producing innovative approaches to knowledge. |
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