Gender Issues In Brazil Essay

Brazil is located in South America, takes up almost half of the continent, and is the fifth largest country in the world(1). The National Assessment on Gender and Science, Technology and Innovation study has shown that despite Brazil having a large amount of women in the fields of science and technology numbers are on the decline(5). Furthering women’s participation in and and access to the sciences and technology is a worldwide issue, throughout this paper we will discuss the issues and successes of Brazil so far, how they relate to the priorities of the UN and issues that women face around the world in workplaces of science and technology.

Poverty is prevalent in Brazil 40% of the county’s income goes to the top 10% of financially richest people where only about 1% of the income goes to the bottom 10%(1) about 35% of Brazil’s population lives in poverty(19). Since women

“The mean score on the 100-point scale was 80 percent for post industrial societies, compared to 69 percent for industrial nations and 60 percent for agrarian societies.” (10) Brazil falls into the category of industrial nations and is somewhere in the middle of the gender equality scale. Anthropologists have looked at many differences in gender equality in separate cultures, some of the research they have accumulated has pointed to a correlation between equality and affluence. The most affluent societies are usually the most in favor of gender equality, there are exceptions of course but this correlation is mostly positive. Research has shown that even though there are significantly more women in the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematical fields the flow of women in engineering and computer sciences have either plateaued or are even declining. This is a serious issue because engineering and computer sciences are the fast growing fields and require the greatest workforce demand