More women are needed in STEM research and in science, but let’s keep on building a “polytechnic culture”, too
To achieve a more balanced and stable culture, better quality of life and a future we can look forward to with hope, we need science – and scientific research and the development of technologies on a human scale need more women scientists. “Too few young women choose to pursue scientific studies, we need to do more” asserted Prime Minister Mario Draghi last week, while visiting the laboratories of the Istituto nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, situated below the Gran Sasso massif in Italy, one of the most renowned research centres for nuclear physics worldwide.
“Doing more” can be translated into an actual figure: a billion euro, an investment aimed at strengthening the teaching of STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths) and overcome gender stereotypes, still perpetuated by the fact that even today only one young woman out of five chooses to study one of these disciplines at university level.
This billion is part of a large investment package for education and research totalling €30 billion, a portion of PNRR (the Italian recovery and resilience plan) funds. Thanks to the EU’s Recovery Plan, €6.9 billion will be devolved to basic research activities, with the clear aim of trying to rapidly bridge the gap that, historically, has always set Italy apart from other major European countries. A gap that, unfortunately, is widening. Indeed, according to data presented in Parliament by territorial entrepreneurial institution Confindustria on 15 February, in Italy only €158 per person are invested to fund public research (universities and the National Research Council of Italy) as compared to the EU average of €263 and Germany’s €415. This figure amounts to 0.56% of the Italian GDP (which has remained stable for the past 20 years) as opposed to the EU average of 0.8% and Germany’s 1%. Basically, it’s just not enough.
This investment is boosted by private contributions, which increased from 0.5% in 2000 to 0.94% in 2020. Yet, while Italian companies are attempting to become more competitive on international markets that are increasingly more technological and selective, Italy actually lacks appropriate support to conduct basic research, let alone applied research.
Confindustria suggests that greater public funding is needed – and that it should amount to at least the EU average – as well as a long-term fiscal stimulus to encourage private investments. This could then generate synergy between the public and private spheres, as the finest instances of collaboration between the academic and the corporate sectors show (the positive experiences by the two polytechnic universities in Milan and Turin are extremely indicative).
More research and more science, then – and more women involved, following the examples of Fabiola Gianotti, Director-General at CERN; Lucia Votano, the first woman appointed as director of the Gran Sasso laboratory; Maria Chiara Carrozza, president of the CNR; Maria Cristina Messa, Minister of University and Research (and a medical doctor engaged in research work); and all the other women who are increasingly gaining success in prestigious universities and international research centres.
More women scientists. More women researchers with prominent leadership roles, as it happens with men. More women in STEM.
And speaking of STEM university degrees, a point could be made. A point contained by one letter, the “A” of arts – that is, the range of humanities subjects that should be interwoven with scientific knowledge. A move from STEM to STEAM, taking into consideration a deep-rooted feature of Italian culture that characterised the best eras of Humanism and the Renaissance, as well as 20th-century industrial progress: that of a multidisciplinary “polytechnic culture”, where multifaceted knowledge is a strength, where maths and philosophy, engineering and literature, neurological sciences and sociology, history, economy and chemistry, aesthetics and information technology, interlink. Some people even see interdisciplinarity as a trait of women’s intelligence and cognizance.
STEAM and not just STEM, then – this was the outcome of the long and detailed process that Assolombarda carried out in past years. A conclusion confirmed by the evolution of the so-called “knowledge economy”, whereby different yet complementary viewpoints and sets of knowledge intersect, while the development of Artificial Intelligence further adds new technical challenges and philosophical issues related to the nature of sentience and possible directions to follow.
Science and beauty, in essence, and the beauty of science, just as Primo Levi taught us in his intriguing Il sistema periodico (The periodic table) and Leonardo Sinisgalli in his Furor mathematicus (Mathematical madness). Levi was a chemist and an author while Sinisgalli was a poet and an engineer, and the works of both should be studied, read and reread by everyone, and possibly inspiring future women scientists.
To achieve a more balanced and stable culture, better quality of life and a future we can look forward to with hope, we need science – and scientific research and the development of technologies on a human scale need more women scientists. “Too few young women choose to pursue scientific studies, we need to do more” asserted Prime Minister Mario Draghi last week, while visiting the laboratories of the Istituto nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, situated below the Gran Sasso massif in Italy, one of the most renowned research centres for nuclear physics worldwide.
“Doing more” can be translated into an actual figure: a billion euro, an investment aimed at strengthening the teaching of STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths) and overcome gender stereotypes, still perpetuated by the fact that even today only one young woman out of five chooses to study one of these disciplines at university level.
This billion is part of a large investment package for education and research totalling €30 billion, a portion of PNRR (the Italian recovery and resilience plan) funds. Thanks to the EU’s Recovery Plan, €6.9 billion will be devolved to basic research activities, with the clear aim of trying to rapidly bridge the gap that, historically, has always set Italy apart from other major European countries. A gap that, unfortunately, is widening. Indeed, according to data presented in Parliament by territorial entrepreneurial institution Confindustria on 15 February, in Italy only €158 per person are invested to fund public research (universities and the National Research Council of Italy) as compared to the EU average of €263 and Germany’s €415. This figure amounts to 0.56% of the Italian GDP (which has remained stable for the past 20 years) as opposed to the EU average of 0.8% and Germany’s 1%. Basically, it’s just not enough.
This investment is boosted by private contributions, which increased from 0.5% in 2000 to 0.94% in 2020. Yet, while Italian companies are attempting to become more competitive on international markets that are increasingly more technological and selective, Italy actually lacks appropriate support to conduct basic research, let alone applied research.
Confindustria suggests that greater public funding is needed – and that it should amount to at least the EU average – as well as a long-term fiscal stimulus to encourage private investments. This could then generate synergy between the public and private spheres, as the finest instances of collaboration between the academic and the corporate sectors show (the positive experiences by the two polytechnic universities in Milan and Turin are extremely indicative).
More research and more science, then – and more women involved, following the examples of Fabiola Gianotti, Director-General at CERN; Lucia Votano, the first woman appointed as director of the Gran Sasso laboratory; Maria Chiara Carrozza, president of the CNR; Maria Cristina Messa, Minister of University and Research (and a medical doctor engaged in research work); and all the other women who are increasingly gaining success in prestigious universities and international research centres.
More women scientists. More women researchers with prominent leadership roles, as it happens with men. More women in STEM.
And speaking of STEM university degrees, a point could be made. A point contained by one letter, the “A” of arts – that is, the range of humanities subjects that should be interwoven with scientific knowledge. A move from STEM to STEAM, taking into consideration a deep-rooted feature of Italian culture that characterised the best eras of Humanism and the Renaissance, as well as 20th-century industrial progress: that of a multidisciplinary “polytechnic culture”, where multifaceted knowledge is a strength, where maths and philosophy, engineering and literature, neurological sciences and sociology, history, economy and chemistry, aesthetics and information technology, interlink. Some people even see interdisciplinarity as a trait of women’s intelligence and cognizance.
STEAM and not just STEM, then – this was the outcome of the long and detailed process that Assolombarda carried out in past years. A conclusion confirmed by the evolution of the so-called “knowledge economy”, whereby different yet complementary viewpoints and sets of knowledge intersect, while the development of Artificial Intelligence further adds new technical challenges and philosophical issues related to the nature of sentience and possible directions to follow.
Science and beauty, in essence, and the beauty of science, just as Primo Levi taught us in his intriguing Il sistema periodico (The periodic table) and Leonardo Sinisgalli in his Furor mathematicus (Mathematical madness). Levi was a chemist and an author while Sinisgalli was a poet and an engineer, and the works of both should be studied, read and reread by everyone, and possibly inspiring future women scientists.