Opinion: Lula cannot miss the chance to nominate a woman for the Science portfolio

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Elected for his third term as president of the country, Lula (PT) has a unique opportunity in his hands: to do things differently and leave a strong mark on his new administration. Considering your transition team’s list of names, this will not be the case for the Science portfolio.

The group of 12 experts who will hand over the government’s baton in science and technology —at a very high technical level, by the way— has only two women. Ecologist Ima Vieira, from the Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi, and historian Iraneide Soares da Silva, from the State University of Piauí (Uespi). The end.

They represent scientists from the North and Northeast of the country, which is great. The second also brings guidelines from the Associação Brasileira de Pesquisadores/as Negros/as (ABPN), to which he belongs — something very important in national science.

How it is Sheet has already shown, those who train professionals in public and private higher education in Brazil are, above all, white people. The science produced in Brazil is still very white — and, in some areas of knowledge, it is even whiter.

The two specialists are, however, alone in a group of men that has already been seen a lot around.

The transition list ranges from the physicist Sergio Machado Rezende, minister of the portfolio from 2005 to 2011 (thus encompassing part of Lula’s two terms) to Luiz Antônio Elias, who was a strong secretary of the MCTI (Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation ) from the period of Rezende until a few years later. He was also in the federal science portfolio under President Dilma Rousseff (PT).

There is yet another ex-minister in the group: Celso Pansera (today in the PT), who commanded the portfolio at the end of Dilma’s second term. He stayed until just before the impeachment of the president, in 2016.

Engineer Glaucius Oliva, from the Physics Institute of USP in São Carlos, has also been with Lula-Dilma. He chaired CNPq, the federal science promotion agency linked to the Ministry of Science, from 2011 to 2015.

This was after assuming a management position at the same CNPq, in 2010, shortly after winning the USP rectory elections and, controversially, not being appointed by then governor José Serra, from the PSDB (at the time, the person who took over was the 2nd place, the jurist João Grandino Rodas).

And most importantly: Oliva is also the name behind Science without Borders, the main exchange program in the country’s history — and star of Dilma’s science management. A signal, perhaps, that the program is redesigned.

There are new names on Lula’s list, of course. And pretty strong. The main one is USP physicist Ricardo Galvão, former director of the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe), fired by the government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) because he showed that the Amazon was being devastated in a significant way.

At the time, Inpe satellites showed that more than 1,000 km² of Amazon rainforest were cut down in the first half of July 2019, an increase of 68% compared to the same period of the previous year.

In one of the main denialist signs of the federal government, even before the pandemic, INPE’s data were rejected and Galvão was exonerated on the grounds that he could be “at the service of some NGO”.

Now, after unsuccessfully applying for a vacancy for federal deputy for the Network, Galvão has been one of the main names quoted for important positions in science in Lula’s new administration — in clear contrast to the Bolsonarist administration in the area, considered a real disaster.

Precisely because it was a disaster, the “simple” technical composition of Lula’s list already brings some relief. The lack of diversity, however, does not go down.

Low female participation does not dialogue with science itself. A few years ago, women already accounted for half of national scientific production — which is quite significant. This means that they sign around 50% of scientific articles with authors linked to research institutions in Brazil.

Even so, they are still rare in leadership positions in academia and science policy. They have never occupied, for example, the effective position of command of the MCTI since the portfolio was created, in 1985. The only —and brief— exception was Emília Maria Silva Ribeiro Curi, who temporarily took over the portfolio in 2016, after the departure of Celso Pansera. A scenario that, clearly, Lula could change.

Suggestions? Several: the biomedical Helena Nader who is president of the ABC (Brazilian Academy of Sciences), the epidemiologist not appointed to the rectory of Ufes (Federal University of Espírito Santo), Ethel Maciel, the physicist Marcia Barbosa, the microbiologist Natalia Pasternak, the immunologist Ester Sabino who made the genome of the coronavirus in record time. And so on.

In a presidential election in which science was so present, for example, in debates on Covid, the Amazon and hunger, it is also necessary for its technical staff to pay special attention —and to be innovative. A woman at the Ministry of Science would be a great plot twist in Lula’s plot.

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