Scientists, doctors and engineers in their own trenches have contributed with their work from the safety of vehicles to the discovery of components for vaccines against the coronavirus; they seek to inspire girls and young women who enter this world to travel a simpler path than the one they traveled.
Dalia Ramos, head of Build and Test for the Alpine Formula 1 team, has contributed to vehicle safety.
They are Mexican voices that have sown the idea in society of betting on the valuable contribution of women to science and technology. Their work, in addition to improving the environment in which they live, is to inspire and awaken that passion and dreams in girls and young women to explore this path.
They have supported families of cancer patients and pregnant women; improved safety and speed for Formula 1 cars; prevented childhood diseases and promoted biofuel in aviation and solar energy.
And how do you inspire others to pursue the world of science and technology? They answered that by conveying their love and passion for the profession and letting them know that scientific thinking forged their sense of the search for truth, not only in the laboratory, but in everyday life.
Showing them the tools that the scientific method offered them to make better decisions as daughters, sisters, mothers, wives and within their community spaces.
And that unique and common language they acquired to dialogue and create without distinction of gender, language or geographic space.
Science and technology also gave them a plane ticket to travel the world, to travel to different places, where they never imagined. They have friends in several cities, they have engaged in conversations that they thought could only happen in novels or books by Plato and Aristotle, and they have even danced with Nobel Prize winners.
But above all, what science has brought to their lives is a tolerance for frustration.
Most of them have worked in strategic countries for the generation of knowledge such as the United States, England, Switzerland, Qatar or Spain.
They have understood the importance of the female vision when making decisions to generate knowledge and achieve an integral vision, avoiding blind spots, for example, did you know that seat belts were designed using mannequins representative of men of approximately 70 kilos and neither the weights nor the female anatomies were taken into account, or that, although 90% of pregnant women take medication, only 5% of the drugs have adequate information on whether they are safe or not when taken during pregnancy?
Their names are Aideé Zamora, engineer and founder of Grupo Amerali (solar energy); Angélica Cuapio, immunology researcher and member of the Global Network Mx Sweden Chapter; Carol Perelman, pharmaceutical chemist, biologist, UNAM and science communicator; Cipatli Ayuzo, pediatrician, academic and researcher; Claudia Gutiérrez, academic at the Autonomous University of Querétaro and researcher for aviation biofuel projects; Dalia Ramos, head of Build and Test for the Alpine Formula 1 team; Erika Plata, intensivist, researcher and first Mexican doctor in Qatar; Talia Wegman Ostrosky, oncogeneticist and researcher; and Sandra López León, geneticist, epidemiologist, researcher and professor at Rutgers University in the USA.
They narrate their processes; behind them there are no quick formulas or instant results. They assure that it is not a matter of having only a handful of women scientists or engineers, but of going after the ideas and dreams of many and working to generate conditions that will lead girls and young women with the need to contribute something valuable to follow a much simpler path than the one they have followed.
According to the United Nations, more than 7.1 million jobs will have been created (many based on science, technology and artificial intelligence) and half of today’s jobs will have disappeared by 2050. They cannot be excluded. And today only 33.3% of researchers in the world are women.
They advised to stop discouraging girls to belong to the world of science and technology, because they should neither sacrifice nor give up their personal lives, nor is it as difficult as historically transmitted to them.
And there is a motto that when you do something you are passionate about, science flows. You don’t have to work that much harder”.
The scientists and engineers who decided to become mothers and wives, their personal life is the most important thing for them, the only recommendation they gave to balance their professional life is to choose a good partner.
The Hungarian scientist Katalin Karikó, developer of messenger RNA vaccines, which were crucial to face the covid-19 pandemic and the basis of Pfizer and Moderna, said that it is possible to be a mother and a scientist, but you have to find a good husband.
They recognize that they have been able to grow professionally thanks to the support of their husbands.
Therefore, they talked about the importance of having these conversations with parents, siblings, teachers, grandparents, because expectations and languages can mark the path of women and it is necessary to have the support of their partners, of the other sex and that they are part of their plan.
They have instilled in their students that to be good scientists, first, you have to be good people and find a balance between taking care of themselves, such as eating well, enough sleep, exercise and fun.
The students have also been taught to stop fulfilling expectations and stereotypes of what they should be and simply go for their authenticity.
Because the routes that had been established as “valid” to reach “success” were designed by men and for men, and it is one of the biggest obstacles and reasons why there are so many women entering careers in science, but so few in leadership positions.
And true equity lies in women being able to design their own alternate paths and meet their own “gender” needs.
Their voices are heard louder and closer to tell the new generations that today are accompanied by them; to let go of that insecurity or insufficiency when stepping into positions that historically were denied to women, because these scientists and engineers are already occupying them, being women and Mexican, leaving their mark at international level and enriching knowledge.
Today, what they come to tell girls and young women is that they are no longer alone, because the key to science and technology is collaboration.
VOICES
“I consider that the most valuable thing I have been able to contribute with this feminine vision on the subject of technology is how to generate sensitive projects. That girls can feel part of those solutions and of those uses of technology. I like to go and talk in secondary schools, high schools, universities, about the opportunities that exist and my life experience”. -Aideé Zamora, engineer and founder of Grupo Amerali (solar energy)
The most valuable thing that science has contributed to my life, as a woman, are the tools that I use on a daily basis to make decisions as a daughter, sister, mother, wife and within my social and community environment. It has given me a common language to understand, dialogue and create together with the rest of humanity without the distinction of femininity, geographic space, language or time, showing that as human beings we are equal and that ideas have no gender.
The same Hungarian Katalin Karikó, developer of the messenger RNA vaccines that were so useful during covid 19, said “yes you can be a mom and a scientist, you just have to find yourself a good husband”. You have to have these conversations with parents, siblings, teachers, grandparents, because expectations, languages, can mark a lot of the way, and we need the support of partners, the support of the other sex, to be part of the plan”.
TO SANCTION FAMILY SUPPORT DEBTORS
Two years ago, feeling emotionally tired and economically broken due to her ex-partner’s refusal to take financial and emotional responsibility for the daughter they both procreated, Diana Luz Vázquez, from Oaxaca, called through Facebook to all those women, who like her, were part of the statistics estimated by Inegi, which says that there are 35 million single mothers economically violated by their ex-partners for not receiving child support.
The response was such that she, along with other women from Oaxaca, took to the streets and placed clotheslines in the Plaza de Santo Domingo with the photos and names of the child support debtors.
This act had a great impact on society and went viral on networks, which later began to be replicated in other states with great success. It was there that Vázquez realized that there is a pending debt with millions of mothers who raised their children on their own, and since last year she has been trying to pass the Sabina Law, which promotes and promotes 40 legislative reforms, both civil and criminal, to punish and force those who owe child support to take responsibility for their children without any pretext whatsoever.
The bill includes proposing the abandonment of a pregnant woman as a crime, requesting the intervention of the Public Ministry and the UIF of the SHCP to investigate the accounts and/or assets of the child support debtors every time a debtor claims not to have a job or income (something very common in child support lawsuits), as well as sending his name to the credit bureau, the creation of a public registry of child support debtors and that the debtor, upon failure to make such payment, loses the parental rights of the child.
The initiative, promoted by Congresswoman Ana Francis Mor in the II Legislature of the Congress of the CDMX, also contemplates reducing from 90 to 30 days the time in which a child support debtor must comply with his/her economic responsibility and also stipulates that when a debtor fails to pay child support for 30 days, the immigration authorities must be notified so that the debtor’s passport may be taken away and he/she may not leave the country. It also seeks to repeal from Article 320 paragraph I which states that “the obligation to provide alimony is suspended or ceases, as the case may be, when the obligor lacks the means to do so“.
TYT Newsroom
