Activities of the Argentinean Team

Silvina Ponce Dawson, Universidad de Buenos Aires (team leader)
Karen Hallberg,  Centro Atómico Bariloche
María Cristina Caracoche, Universidad de La Plata

The first task of the Argentinian team was to collect data on the situation of women in physics
in Argentina. The data collected is available at:
http://www.df.uba.ar/users/silvina/women/datos_mujeres.html

Based on this information, a poster was presented at the International Conference  that took place in Paris between March 7th and 9th, 2002. The written report included in the Proceedings of the Conference was also based on these data. Two members of the team (S.P.D. and K.H.) attended that conference. The information on the discussions that took place during the conference, the results of the survey conducted by the AIP and of the resolutions that were taken at the Conference was spread within the community in different ways:

• A web page containing this information was created (http://www.df.uba.ar/users/silvina/women/)
• A talk was given at the Physics Department of Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, UBA, in April 2002 (see http://coloquios.df.uba.ar/col02.html)
• A talk was given at the Physics Department of Centro Atómico Constituyentes, CNEA, in May 2002 (http://www.tandar.cnea.gov.ar/actividades/2002/index.html)

The team was also responsible for the local dissemination of information on research oportunities and funding options for women physicists and on the L'Oreal prize for women physicists in the area of condensed matter. The Latin American winner of this prize was finally the Argentinian physicist, Mariana Weissmann. The prize received wide coverage on main national media, including TV and major newspapers (see  Una física argentina ganó un importante premio internacional and  La física computacional Clarin, Feb. 27, 2003; "La doctora Weissmann recibió su premio en París", La Nación, Feb. 28, 2003, "Premios Nobel galardonan en Francia a una física argentina",  La Nación, Feb. 27, 2003). This was a good opportunity to convey the situation of women in science to a general public.

Following the recomendations of the conference, a letter requesting the conformation of a special committee that would take care of women related issues was sent to the Executive Committee of the Asociación Física Argentina. The association agreed to the request and a committee composed by: Karen Hallberg, P.Levstein, M.Mechetti, and S.Ledesma was formed.

Based on the experience gained through the activities related to the IUPAP working group on women in physics, and, in particular, on the collection of  information on the situation of women physicists in Argentina, one of us (SPD) was invited to co-coordinate a project funded by UNESCO (Uruguay) to survey the situation of women in the exact and natural sciences in general. In this way, the Argentinian chapter of the GENTEC project was started.  A survey was conducted to determine the situation at the institutions involved in scientific research, PhD programs, and scientific societies. The survey also included a questionaire that could be filled in online. The data has already been collected but the report has not been written yet. Various newspaper articles were published in connection with this project. In particular, articles written by V. Engler appeared at the national newspaper La Nación (Mujeres en la ciencia: según una encuesta de la Unesco en la investigación, las categorias mas altas estan dominadas por hombres, La Nación 16.09.2002), and at a regular publication of the School of Exact and Natural Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires (Cable Semanal, September 2002). An article written by D. Campos appeared at a newspaper that is freely distributed at major universities,  La U. Silvina Ponce Dawson was also interviewed by specialists of the area from the Cátedra Regional Unesco Mujer, Ciencia y Tecnología. The tape with the interview was going to be used for their teaching and related activities.