Presenças e ausências das mulheres negras nas ciências e no ensino: enfrentamentos e inspirações na representação social de licenciandas em química

Abstract

Currently, it is possible to notice the expressive number of women in many universities and research institutions. However, women still find it difficult to progress, hierarchically, in the academic career, when they appear to men. In the context of this discussion, it is important to emphasize that prejudice does not affect all women in the same way. Often, it operates in a subtle and veiled way, reaching black women both by gender difference and by difference in ethnicity. Therefore, it is possible to state that women have more difficulties in reconciling a scientific career in a society that has several patriarchal characteristics. It is in this situation of “presences and absences” of black women in science that I insert the religion of this research, seeking to understand, through the investigation of the social representation of the students of the Degree in Chemistry, the influence of the meanings attributed to their initial formation process as a teacher. With this, we seek to understand how the social representations of the graduates of a Chemistry Degree course at a university in the interior of Bahia, about the understanding of women students of the Chemistry degree course about the importance of women and black teachers teaching in Higher Education. The research methodology adopted in this work is based on the precepts of the Theory of Social Representations and Feminist Activism, described by the authors: Serge Moscovici, Angela Arruda and Denise Jodelet. The target audience consisted of 28 students from a Chemistry Degree course at a public university in the interior of Bahia, who identify as female and who were actively enrolled, from the first to the last semester. Through a questionnaire designed to describe the academic profile of undergraduate students and also to investigate the Social Representation of this group about the presence and absence of black women in science. With regard to data analysis, the use of the IRAMUTEQ software was applied with the aim of erecting the Tree of Maximum Similitude, which makes it possible to distinguish the terms of greater significance to what the students think about the participation of black women in science. When portraying black women in the sciences of these 19 scientists only 2 are black, which they are; Rafaela Lima (graduated through UFRB/CFP), and Enedina Alves Marques (first black civil engineer in Brazil). In view of this, the lack of black representation in Science Teaching is notorious, making science still mostly male, light-colored, which is why it is important to debate the history of women in society, in Education and in scientific careers so that more and more we can reach these women and it shows that they can and have their place in the sciences.