The activities began on Wednesday morning in the Auditorium on the Sant Cugat Campus with the round table discussion “Are Maternity and Academia Compatible?”, in which debate revolved around the current situation of female researchers. The event, moderated by Laura Rubio, head of the Rector’s Office and director of Communication, featured three researchers from UIC Barcelona who are also mothers, each of whom are at a different stage in their academic career: Dr Nuria Casals, full professor, director of the Doctoral School and leader of the New Cyclins Research Group; Dr Maria Fernández-Capo, director of the Department of Basic Sciences and leader of the Emerging Research Group in Personal Strengths; and Begoña Bosch, a doctoral student who is about to defend her thesis. The round table participants, and the attendees, shared their personal experiences and stressed the need for new reconciliation and shared responsibility policies that do not penalise female researchers who want to become mothers and move forward in their academic career.
Wednesday also saw the first performance by the company Big Van, on the Barcelona Campus. Using humour and science, the monologues drew attention to the role of women in the scientific world, starting with the woman who invented Wi-Fi. The also spoke about the two women short-listed for the Nobel Prize for their research on genetics. It was a lively, scientific and entertaining show.
On Thursday, the Barcelona Campus hosted the conference “From Hildegard of Bingen to Frida Kahlo: Female Artists Forgotten by Art History”, delivered by Dr Judith Urbano, dean of the Faculty of Humanities. Dr Urbano began her talk with a brief explanation as to why women have been overshadowed throughout art history and seen their role reduced to that of “painted objects” instead of painters. According to the dean, the reason lies in the fact that, on the one hand, history in its current form was narrated in the 19th century by men, and that, on the other, much of the work done by women has been attributed to men. During the session, Dr Urbano cited a number of cases involving artists, some more famous than others, from different movements and time periods, and offered details about their main accomplishments and attributes. She began with Hildegard of Bingen and finished with the contemporary artist Frida Kahlo.
The line-up of activities comes to an end today, Friday, Women’s Day. On the Sant Cugat Campus, the company Big Van will give a repeat performance in the entrance to the campus, while the cafeteria on the Barcelona Campus will host a screening of the film Hidden Figures. This film follows three black female mathematicians, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, who played an instrumental role in NASA in the 1960s.
