On August 17 and 18, the Elas Fund is organizing the 1st National Dialogue "Elas nas Exatas". Organized in partnership with the Unibanco Institute and the Carlos Chagas Foundation, the meeting will take place in São Paulo. It will be the first national event to bring together educators, researchers and activists to debate gender inequalities in the field of exact sciences.
The aim of the Dialogue is to find strategies for fostering the talents and vocations of young women in the field of science and technology, gathering input for the XX Elas Fund Project Competition, which will be launched in September and will fund 10 relevant initiatives on the subject.
It will be an opportunity to learn about successful experiences in the field, produce reflections and new paths, as well as promote exchanges and build networks between professionals and activists who are dedicated to thinking about gender issues and the exact sciences and technologies. Scientists, researchers, school principals, high school students and feminist activists will be present.
"Why is there a difference between men and women in the exact sciences and technology?" is one of the questions that will guide the discussions. There will be six rounds over the course of the two days, which will also deal with topics such as school and the market as spaces for promoting gender equality and the challenges and opportunities for the inclusion of women in the exact sciences.
Initiatives to encourage women in this field will be presented, such as the "There's a girl in the circuit" project, a collaboration between professors at the Physics Institute of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the Alfredo Neves School, which runs textile and paper electronics workshops for high school students.
There will be representatives from groups such as Women in Technology, a non-profit organization that aims to increase and empower female participation in IT, and Women in Computing, a project that grew out of the blog of young Camila Achutti. With a degree in Computer Science from USP, Camila helped bring the Technovation Challenge, an entrepreneurship and technology challenge for girls, to Brazil.
High school students also took part in the Dialogue. Students were invited from the NAVE project (Núcleo Avançado em Educação), a program focused on research and the development of educational solutions that uses information and communication technologies in secondary education, training students for professions in the digital area.
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