A mulher e a Ciência-Tecnologia: como se encontram em dissertações e teses? Como se encontram em livros didáticos de ciências e física?

Abstract

Women suffered from discrimination and prejudice when excluded from sciencetechnology due to historical, cultural and social factors, which, in general, are not addressed in textbooks. Starting from the problems: What are the themes and the main results of research on women scientists present in the dissertations and theses found on the IBICT portal (Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology)? How are the contributions of women to the development of science and technology presented in the collections of science textbooks from the final years of elementary and high school in high school, adopted by public schools in the municipality of Cerro Largo, RS? The objective was to verify which are the focuses of research on women in science-technology carried out in dissertations and theses found at IBICT, to analyze and problematize the main results found by the researchers and to understand how female contributions are approached in these researches, to verify if there is the presence of women who contributed to the scientific-technological development in the collections of science textbooks of the final years of elementary school and physics in high school, adopted by public schools in the municipality of Cerro Largo, to identify and characterize the frequency with which women who contributed to science-technology are approached in the collections and analyze and understand how their contributions / mentions are presented in textbooks. To this end, a study was carried out through bibliographic research, using as a corpus of analysis the theses and dissertations on female scientists available at IBICT and the textbooks adopted by schools, the focus of the study. The methodological path followed according to the Discursive Textual Analysis, in the research available at IBICT and with the Content Analysis, in the textbooks. From these analyzes, 4 categories emerged, which make up the 2 metatexts, resulting from this research: 1) The invisibility of female models; 2) Motherhood, double working hours and “being a scientist”; 3) Female biographies of scientists; 4) Textbooks: the invisibility of women scientists. In summary, we found that, in the researches analyzed, most of them contemplate historical, cultural and social factors of a given time and discussions about gender and science from a scientific figure, addressing the difficulties arising from the discrimination suffered by women in their context. In the case of books, these discussions are not so present. It appears that the feminine contribution in the books of Physics is little addressed, without involving discussions about the theme “gender and science”. The science collection, on the other hand, allows such discussion through questions and research. In view of the above, we hope that the discussions raised will contribute to reflect on the incentives that are being offered for girls to continue in the scientifictechnological field, as well as on the current role of women in society, their double workday and greater responsibility about children.