Women and trajectories within the Faculty of Medical Sciences, UNICAMP: singular voices and collective images

Mulheres e trajetórias na Faculdade de Ciências Médicas da Unicamp: vozes singulares e imagens coletivas

Maria Inez Montagner

Departamento de Medicina Preventiva e Social, Faculdade de Ciências Médicas, Universidade Estadual de Campinas. <inezmontagner@hotmail.com>

Replicated from Interface - Comunicação, Saúde, Educação, Botucatu, v.12, n.26, p. 683, Jul./Set. 2008.

Keywords: gender, women, science, scientific institutions, habitus, medical school.

Palabras clave: Identidad de género. Mujeres. Ciência. Escuelas médicas. Habitus. Instituciones acadêmicas.

The purpose of this research is to conduct an historic and social repatriation of female researchers, beginning with their work as scientists and professors within the Faculty of Medical Sciences, UNICAMP.

Imbued with theoretical references of gender studies, within the sociology of science and more specifically in the area of health, the study seeks to understand the trajectory of these women, their personal and professional choices articulated with their social strategies.

To achieve this, it is assumed that gender is expressed in many areas of social life, including the culture, ideology, science and its general practices. However, the research is specifically interested in how these women manage to articulate their research practices and their teaching, administration and university extension activities with their daily and family lives.

The research consists of three moments. The first involved documentation of the researchers (Lattes Platform), outlining their trajectories within the academic milieu and their strategies within the field of science. The second involves conducting detailed interviews elaborated on the basis of information and presuppositions formulated during analysis of the documentation, which permitted configuration of the process of social construction of the academic trajectories.  Finally, in the third moment, based on the theory of Pierre Bourdieu, the research seeks to outline the habitus of the researchers.

The ongoing study is being conducted within the sociological perspective and the gender studies that compose our works, forming the basis of our analyses. Historical studies are of considerable importance and worth, when seeking to attend to this theme, since we comprehend that understanding the historical and cultural context is necessary in order to establish the relation between discourses and theories.

With this work, we hope to contribute to the understanding of the role and position of these women in the academic field, as they conform to their habitus and what relations these have with questions of gender, especially given the fact that these activities are developed within a four-fold structure: teaching, research, administration and extension.