A project to try to attract girls to exact sciences | Science and health

There is no official survey for How many women Deal directly with quantum computing. But the snippet conducted by the National Institute of Quantitative Information Science and Technology (INCT-IQ) helps measure female participation in this field of Quantitative research As a whole.

Of the 120 participants who benefited financially from the institute, only 9% were women. “The low participation of women is a problem that needs to be addressed at the primary and secondary school level,” says Pelita Koehler, INCT-IQ Coordinator.

• Gender parity in computer science will not be achieved in 100 years
• The Gender Data Gap: Invisible Women in a World Designed by Men

In an effort to increase female participation in physics, professors at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (URFJ) have created a project called There is a girl on the ring In 2013, with the aim of attracting female students to the field of exact sciences.

“Like any problem, it’s not a single cause of a decrease in the number of women. It’s clearly related to how high school presents physics issues. It’s very formal, it only sees the mathematical side of physics and gives up on creativity,” says Teresa Paiva, professor at UFRJ and one of the project’s co-founders. .