Adela Muñoz: "It should be mandatory for scientists to contribute to disclosure"

The chemist and writer Adela Muñoz Páez. PACO PUENTES (EL PAIS)

Adela Muñoz Páez (La Carolina, Jaén, 1958) has spent a few months embarking on two projects closely linked to her vocation for scientific dissemination and for bringing the work and legacy of women scientists closer by applying the gender perspective: A scientist at your school Andalusian, where veteran scientific women and doctoral students from different specialties tell in the classrooms through experiments how their work is to promote the scientific vocation in girls before they lose interest;

and talks about

, which teaches within the cycles Science in the Neighborhoods with which the University of Seville transfers the importance of research to the most humble neighborhoods of the city with high rates of school absenteeism.

Some initiatives that, as in the chemical reactions that she dominates, seek to reverse in the students the inertia that science careers are for men.

Molina, professor of Inorganic Chemistry, speaks of the importance of disclosure to generate awareness in society of the value of scientific knowledge, with the same passion with which she explains, always from an eminently scientific basis, the war in Ukraine, the consequences of the scarcity of raw materials after the pandemic and its effects on the development of renewable energies.

"Science surrounds us," he recalls

Ask.

The objective of

is to start with talks at a very early age to make science attractive to girls, because when they have to choose the branch of study they have already developed the perception that science careers are not for them .

How is the reaction?

Response.

Chemistry teachers are with six and seven year old students and everyone participates equally.

Girls have not yet developed the idea that science is not for them.

The other day when we were developing an experiment, the seven and eight year old girls told their mothers and teachers that they wanted to be scientists like us.

Then they still change, but at least that remains there, that science is also a girl thing.

P.

If education is the same for everyone, what do you think is the reason for this dropout among girls?

R.

It is not so much what is taught, but what they are constantly seeing everywhere.

Sexualization in recent years has been terrible.

There are pink and blue aisles in toy stores.

What we want is to counteract this effect and do it at relatively early ages.

Because the perception that there are things that are not for girls starts earlier and earlier and it is, above all, due to a commercial issue.

It is a trend that everyone has and that everyone pushes, that boys are a world, they are risky, and girls another, sweet, charming...

Q.

At what point does that dissociation begin to happen?

A.

There are studies that agree that by the time they are six years old, there are already many girls who perceive themselves as less capable of science or math than boys.

And it is assumed and the parents say if the girl does not want to study mathematics, that she should not study, because it is not natural.

What is not natural is not wanting to study mathematics.

Talent has no sex.

Q.

Is that where the introduction of the gender perspective in teaching becomes important?

R.

My theater partner, the mathematician Clara Grima, was not in favor of including the gender perspective.

She said that mathematics belongs to everyone and that everyone likes it, only that there are people who don't know it.

Well, she has changed her mind, because she is seeing how the women's classrooms in her university classes are emptying out.

Just as before it was not natural for a woman to be a doctor, now it is believed that it is not natural for girls to study computer science”

Q.

After the success of the series

, where the protagonist is a woman, the number of parents who signed their daughters up to chess grew, also considered a male field.

With the A scientist at your school initiative, talks about vaccines or plays about women scientists, you also highlight female examples.

Are female roles necessary to enhance the interest of girls?

R.

There are many people who do not see that need.

In the case of women's football, they told me that it was silly to promote it because it was not in demand.

But the minute someone talks about it, the stadiums fill up.

But someone needs to see it is necessary to talk about it.

And that is what we have done in the case of talks about vaccines.

One of our goals was to show that there were women in the research on the coronavirus virus, because at this time it has seemed that there were only men.

In the so-called Spanish flu, one of the first images that comes to mind is that of health workers who were all men, but during this pandemic we saw a photo of a hospital in Brazil where the health workers were all women.

The change has been enormous.

break with inertia

P.

In medicine, the social perception has changed, but in the case of mathematics, since it has been linked to computer science, the number of women enrolled in the degree has fallen overwhelmingly, when before, when it was perceived as a subject related to teaching, they were almost the majority.

R.

50 years ago there were hardly any female pediatricians, it was an essentially male specialty.

That has changed because there are a majority of women doing medicine and with their grades, which are usually better, they choose the specialties of Pediatrics or Gynecology.

Children between now and 15 years old barely have the concept of a male doctor because their pediatrician is a woman.

Just as before it was not natural for a woman to be a doctor, now it is believed that it is not natural for girls to study computer science.

But it is not natural, it is something induced.

Q.

How is it induced?

R.

Most of the compañeras who participate in the theater project teach computer engineering and some have groups of up to 60 students where there are no women and if there has been one or two, they have fled because it is a very masculinized environment.

It is a self-exclusion.

Many girls do not choose to do engineering or computer science because it is associated with geeks.

It is not something natural, it is a social construction.

And the idea of ​​the talks stems from that intention of separating research or engineering as something masculine.

P.

In those talks about vaccines it is still worrying that, in the 21st century, you have to uncover the role of women. Why does it happen?

R.

I think it is an inertia.

An inertia of thinking that the experts are always men and also because of a greater demand from women, which works against us.

But I think so myself.

The moment you write an article, you are no longer just you, you are the representation of women and if you do it regularly, not badly, regularly, they will judge women for your work, while in men there is no that guild feeling.

The idea of ​​the talks stems from the intention of separating research or engineering as something masculine”

Q.

Another of your highly successful projects is your comic about the periodic table explained for children, which has been translated into English and has exceeded 100,000 downloads and has been translated into other languages.

Is there something wrong with the way science subjects are taught in schools so that your initiatives are in such high demand?

R.

The teaching staff is concerned about teaching the subject and many times that concern distorts the vehicle, how it is taught.

In the United Kingdom, the emphasis is on the connection of mathematics, physics, chemistry with daily life.

Page of the comic 'A periodic table with a lot of life' / University of Seville

P.

There, scientific dissemination is also much more generalized.

R.

In Great Britain, in France or in Germany, science and the scientific profession have been very prestigious for three centuries.

The media, the press, the political authorities know that without science there is no future and that it is a great wealth and must be very well financed.

For them, scientific dissemination is fundamental.

In the current government there is much more feminist sensitivity than for science”

P.

What has to happen in Spain to recover that lost time?

A.

Among scientists, being a popularizer was like a demerit.

That is changing, but there is still a little left.

I would do it like military service, men and women scientists should make an annual disclosure contribution, which was mandatory for their promotion.

It is a very revolutionary idea, but politicians will not take science seriously if they are not asked to do so from below.

Society must know that science is vital.

P.

The pandemic has changed that perception

R.

With covid we have seen that science without masks, without vaccines... Without science, many of us would be dead.

P.

What do you think when the Government agrees to increase the Defense budget by 2% in the midst of the war against Ukraine, but the funding for Spanish vaccine research in the midst of a pandemic was not increased by the same proportion?

R.

By the way, that in the CSIC project, Isabel Sola was the only scientist who was not retired and, of course, her name has come up much less than that of Luis Enjuanes... Here the tradition of three centuries is not improvised.

In the current government there is much more feminist sensitivity than for science.

We have to have well-financed science, otherwise science is sinking and politicians need to believe it and that has to come from below.

And we return to the whiting that bites its tail because for society to know that science is important, there must be support for scientific dissemination.

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