social mobility via the youngsters’ graduation, a strategy still perceivable in
most Portuguese families. But in either situation and despite the openness
provided to women by the huge scientific progress along the “golden
decades”, their further studying options, decisions and opportunities would
remain as a strongly gendered endeavour, responsible for the high level of
gender occupational concentration 10.
From our point of view, things are changing nowadays, namely in
which concerns female performance and orientation towards scientific
domains (much more than relatively to the technical ones...), as we have
been discussing. Notwithstanding, HE seems to remain a very gendered
space. Actually, a great deal of research has been developed in Portugal on
such issues like women’ upward mobility inside HE (Amâncio & Âvila,
1995, op. cit), gender bias concerning association and networking
opportunities in HE careers (Reis 2001; Perista & Silva 2004; Thurn et alii
2004; Amâncio 2005), family and career articulation, hierarchical
determinants, career precariousness, field of work reputation (Perista &
Silva 2004, op. cit), among other.
But in spite of all these restrictions, HE remains as the main
occupational area both for women and men developing R&D in Portugal.
Actually, the small share R&D personnel represents among Portuguese
global employment (0,86% in 2003) is mostly allocated to research
activities: some 79,3%, from which 45% are women, according to data for
2004 provided by the European Commission (EC 2006). According to the
same source, more than one half of the R&D personnel worked in HE,
against less than 0,20% in BES and less than 1/6 in Government
occupations. This happens mainly on account of the very limited financial
10 See, namely, Amâncio & Âvila (1995) and Amâncio (2005).