Translator: Julia Behan Reviewer: David DeRuwe How do you imagine a scientist? Did anyone think of a white man, in a lab coat, with big hair? Who thought of Albert Einstein?
Galileo Galilei? Darwin? Isaac Newton?
Why not me me? I’m a Black woman, from northeast Brazil, from the periphery of Salvador, with quilombola ancestry, with a working-class father who was a city bus driver, with a housewife mother, and with uncles who were bricklayers and garbage collection workers. As a quota student, I put together a popular prep course.
Well, in 2013 I entered the Federal University of Sergipe for the medical physics course. I moved 330 kilometers away from home. How would I get by so far away from home?
During the four years I worked on my degree, I had financial aid of 650 reals. Such a small amount! Very little.
And with that money I paid for housing, I bought food, and when I needed medication, I bought that too. I had a dream, the dream of going to a public university. I didn’t want the predetermined destiny of many Black women.
I didn’t want to be another maid. I didn’t want to be a cleaning lady. I wanted to be a scientist, a scientist known for her work, and respected.
PNAD, the National Survey of Households has data which shows that the Black people represent 53% of Brazil’s population. Black students in post-graduate studies represent a total of 29% of students, and, in federal universities, Black students are 15. 8%.
According to the Education Census, from 2018 to 2019, white women were the group most likely to complete high school education, followed by white men. I told you that I entered college as a quota student. Well, the quota policy was implemented in 2012, and in 2013, I entered into the University of Sergipe, more or less one semester after the quota’s implementation.
If you don’t know, Brazil’s Law of Quotas guarantees 50% of university slots for students from public schools, Black students, Brown students, Indigenous students, people with disabilities, and people from groups with an income per capita 1. 5 times the minimum wage. OK, I’ve mentioned quotas and mentioned the permanence scholarship, but there is another word that changes many Black people’s lives, and that’s “public policy.
” These public policies managed to transform my life, and for those who can dream, they can change your life too. And they change our daily lives. We need a government that thinks public policies are for the people.
Besides sexism, Black women suffer with another factor that dehumanizes us: racism. During my undergraduate work and even at post-graduate level, I was called incapable, directly and indirectly. And that dream, of entering the university, ended up being a place of loneliness.
Loneliness because . . .
I came from a public school. A student who comes from a public school and takes a basic science course in a public university arrives with some shortcomings in the sciences, math, and physics. And the fact I had these difficulties meant I ended up pushing people away from me.
I lived in academic solitude. I saw myself as being alone during some of these times. I didn’t want to be the only one in the university environments I was inserted into.
I fight to not be the only one. I fight for more Gabryeles - a Black woman, in basic sciences, with a medical physics degree, and a master’s in nuclear technology. How many do you know?
In 2019, I entered the biggest nuclear institute in Latin America. And when I entered the institute, I began to notice racial inequality, and it disturbed me. I had fought so hard to be in that space, but, at the same time, I saw myself not wanting to stay there.
Together with two friends who were doing their master’s degrees, Karoline Suzart and Priscila Rodrigues, we started developing research to identify the sociocultural profile of the women at the institute, because, if those white and Black women weren’t teaching us, where were they working? Our required classes were taught only by men, and they were white men. We got together with Professor Nélida, who was the president of Women in Nuclear at the time.
Indeed, Brazil has such an organization for women in the nuclear sector. We joined forces. I managed to figure out where Black women were placed in the Institute.
And where were they? They were serving coffee; they were cleaning the floor. When we analyzed the research data, we found out something I already knew, and it was hardly new: 84% of women who voluntarily responded to the questionnaire were white women.
Only 10% of the women who responded were Black - meaning Black or mixed race. Very few, right? And being voluntary, we didn’t have any answers from Indigenous women.
OK. The 2030 UN agenda has 17 goals called SDG - Sustainable Development Goals. I’ll talk about goal number five, about gender equality.
The International Atomic Energy Agency focuses on the nuclear field. It is linked to the UN. This agency conducted research, and found that only a quarter of the global nuclear sector workforce were women.
Only a quarter. They have many projects, with the aim that by 2030 the number of men and women working in the nuclear field will be equal. They launched a scholarship program called “Marie Curie” in 2020 for women in the nuclear field doing their master’s degree.
This selection is also meritocratic, since you need to have a very good resume. You need to have good grades, have published academic articles, and have dedicated your life to the nuclear field. In 2021, they selected 110 women.
And that Black woman, called incapable, who was underestimated, me, Gabryele Moreira, was selected by the International Atomic Energy Agency to receive a Marie Curie scholarship. For those who don’t know Marie Curie, she was the first person, and the only woman to receive two Nobel prizes: one for chemistry and one for physics. Curie discovered two radioactive elements.
I fight to not be the only one. I fight to not be the exception. I fight for the next people, the next women, the next Black people, to come and experience this academic environment in a comfortable and accepting way.
