“Mulheres nas Ciências Exatas e Tecnologias”: percepções de concluintes do Ensino Médio de distintos ambientes socioeducacionais de Palmas/TO

Abstract

Although women are increasingly occupying spaces in the labor market, researches indicate that there is still a discrepancy in the number of women in some specific areas. Compared to men in the areas of sciences and technologies, for example, statistics show a significant increase in women students and active in this area. However, this participation is lower in the research area and progressively decreases as qualification levels increase. Thus, this study initially aimed to verify whether there was gender inequality in the exact and technology courses at a federal public university. From the survey it was found that there are, in fact, significant disparities in these areas, except for the Food Engineering course, which had a higher number of women compared to men. In a second moment, the study proposed to reflect about the presence of women, in the exact sciences and technologies areas, from the perspective of high school graduating female students. The schools of this research are located in different social and educational environments of Palmas / TO: one, being public and in a region of social vulnerabilities, and the other, particularly in the central area of the city. This step was performed using the focus group as the methodology for obtaining data, which allowed us to have access to the imaginary and opinions of these adolescents. The discussions raised in the focus groups were recorded, transcribed and subjected to content analysis. The results were discussed especially in the light of gender studies. The analyzes carried out in the development of the study indicate that the adolescents from both schools have convergent perceptions in several points that evidence the existence of gender stereotypes in science.