Gender relations, power dynamics and silences in Spanish scientific institutions and universities

Abstract

The incorporation of women into the scientific and academic field has improved in recent decades, not without reluctance and with a gender gap that persists at all levels. Some of the discriminations that women have to face are: more time spent on care work inside and outside the workplace, stereotypes and lack of scientific recognition, motherhood as an unrecognized obstacle and therefore a turning point in their careers; and the lack of benchmark women, especially in some areas. Studies that have analyzed the gender gap in the scientific and academic fields in recent decades have typically been doing by statistical data. Without discounting their findings, we consider important to complement them with qualitative studies such as the one we present. Through fieldwork consisting in-depth semi-structured interviews with women working in Spanish research centers and universities, we will analyse the current state of the gender gap in their work environments. The results show that, despite the fact that there are currently certain mechanisms to combat these gender discriminations, some more obvious forms of sexism and others much more subtle and invisible remain. Likewise, some female scientists and academics perceive that they are the ones who do all the work for the academic family, due to the dichotomy of male transparency/hypervisibility versus female opacity/clandestinity that describes women's work in the academic and scientific context. The consequence is a clear employment advantage for men: positions with better pay and social recognition, mainly because they have more time available, both to continue be promoted in their career and to dedicate it to whatever outside of work. We will end this paper with some reflections on the discomfort of female scientists, which go beyond the gender gap and sometimes many of them suggest that the problem lies in the system that supports the scientific and academic world, but also in the current labor market.