Portuguese Women in Science and Technology (S&T): Some Gender Features Behind MSc. and PhD. Achievement

as teaching and researching staff; firms and other economic organisations
(BES), either in manufacturing or in services; Government departments
(GOV), especially in public agencies and laboratories where they work
mostly as researchers. Will Portuguese S&T women follow this same
general pattern?

A first insight on data relative to 2002 HE personnel reveals that
women are under-represented as teachers and researchers⁹ even in the
tertiary education areas where they largely outnumber men as graduates:
this situation is particularly striking in “Sciences”, a domain which
comprises Mathematics, Statistics, Physics, some of the Environment
Studies fields..., where the féminisation rate for the teaching staff was by
then equal to 44,4% (INE, 2006, op. cit.). Less surprisingly, the

feminisation rate among teachers in the “Engineering fields” roughly
approached some 22% in that same year, yet lying below the corresponding
female graduation rate.

Certainly we are aware of the impact played by the co-existence
between two different female teaching generations, the youngest becoming
by and large more prone to scientific domains than the precedent one. A
very interesting research line in this light stresses the fact that Portuguese
graduate women were becoming visible and statistically meaningful long
before most of their European colleagues. When trying to seek the main
reasons behind that outcome, several features use to be mentioned:
belonging to a social elite who tried to compensate family income loss
throughout the investment in their children “human capital”, along the
second half of the 19^th. century; aiming at an intergenerational upward

⁹ The Portuguese Act on Higher Education Teaching Staff actually establishes the double commitment of
teaching and researching for HE assistants and professors.

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