Women mathematicians in Chile: sociology of a scientific field from a interdisciplinary and gender perspective

• In Event: From Hard Case to Fringe Interest: Mathematics and the Sociology of Science Reconsidered -- II

Abstract

We will present the first outcomes of an ongoing research project with a twofold purpose: 1) mapping the field of mathematics in order to define the dominant players and positions, as well as the networks that underlie these positions; 2) and a reconstruction of the career path of women mathematicians that shows the steps that women had to overcome to be inserted in this field.The year 2018 has witnessed in Chile an important social movement triggered mainly from the universities. In the present project we seek to give relevance to what feminist and gender perspectives imply for academic practice, and we do so from the study and reflection on an emblematic disciplinary field of the so-called 'ivory tower' of science, namely, mathematics. Studies that have addressed the low participation of women in mathematics have focused mainly on school education, suggesting that the relationship that girls have with mathematics is strongly conditioned by gender stereotypes. In this project, we will focus on women academics who are already inserted in the mathematical discipline as researchers.We conducted 10 mix and women only focus groups and biographic interviews with 8 women (3 in-depth interviews with each). After a brief description of the mathematical field in Chile, we will in this presentation focus on these women’s biographical accounts in order to identify the common pattern of the career – according to Howard Becker’s concept – of female researchers in mathematics, namely the different stages one has to go through to reach the status of researcher.

Authors

• Jeanne Hersant, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

• Fernando Valenzuela, Universidad Andres Bello