Women and science: the gender gap also affects STEM subjects

Here we are talking again about the gender gap, a discrimination that has its foundations in the sexual gender of a person. The person in question, unfortunately, is always a woman.

Unfortunately, this scourge affects the most varied fields and, in recent years, the discourse is also extending to the STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), an acronym to indicate the subjects of the scientific area such as science, technology, engineering and math. In this regard, in 2018, the Politecnico di Milano launched the POP (Equal Polytechnic Opportunities), a project with the aim of combating this discrimination and favoring a substantial increase in the number of women in the world of science. Behind the idea, the face of a woman, in particular that of Donatella Sciuto, protector of the Milanese university since 2010 where she herself graduated in electronic engineering with a specialization in IT. An avant-garde, if we consider that Sciuto is class 62 and, consequently, studied in a historical period in which women with such a high level of education were real white flies.

The aim of the POP is to bring women closer to scientific subjects, traditionally hampered by social prejudices that girls want to study literature and boys to engineering students and to guarantee equal opportunities not only in the university sphere, but above all in the world of work that awaits the "Scientist", once graduated. In fact, in 2019, the "Respect-Stop Violence Against Women" project, created by Censis in collaboration with the Department for Equal Opportunities of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, highlighted that female adherence to study courses related to IT and Technologies is around 13%, while, in the case of industrial and information engineering, it undergoes a slight increase, reaching 22%. These figures are insignificant if we consider that, on the other hand, the female students who opt for training in teaching are 91.8% of the total and in the linguistic and psychological fields, respectively, 81.6% and 77 , 6%.

The time has come for women to "dare" to approach subjects such as engineering and computer science, given the increasingly important role they play in the world of today and, above all, in that of tomorrow. On the contrary, there will be an inexorable process of fossilization of the "scientific patriarchy", fueled by stereotypes that inhibit women's ambitions.

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Examples that go against the trend with respect to the gender gap in the scientific world are provided to us by our beautiful country. Examples that give us back hope and inspire us to go beyond conventions, breaking down the virtual barriers that prevent us from believing in ourselves if we engage in traditionally male prerogative sectors.

Women like Rita Levi Montalcini, the first woman to enter the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1986 thanks to the identification of Ngf molecules, fundamental in embryonic development and useful in Alzheimer's therapies.

Margherita Hack, astrophysicist and first woman to cover the role of director of the Astronomical Observatory of Trieste from 1964 to 1987, awarded the Gold Medal to the meritorious of science and culture for her commitment to research and civil rights.

Samantha Cristoforetti who, with her degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Munich, is the first female astronaut of Italian nationality to perform a space flight, during which she sets the European record and the female record for staying in space in a single flight, 199 days.

Fabiola Gianotti, Italian physicist on her second term at the general management of CERN in Geneva, the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. It is the first time in the history of the institute that the same person is reconfirmed as director. He approaches the scientific world inspired by the biography of Marie Curie and the photoelectric effect explained by Einstein. In 2012, Time mentions her among the five personalities of the year and, the following year, she is included among the most influential women's centers in the world by Forbes magazine. Its main merit was the discovery of the Higgs boson, a particle that gives mass to all the others, without which our universe would not exist.