Mathematics, more and more women graduates but careers stagnate

12 May marks the International Day of Women in Mathematics, now in its eighth year. The aim is to inspire women around the world to celebrate their achievements in this field, where female graduates are increasing but their careers struggle to reach the highest positions.

The date was chosen because it was on this day in 1977 that Maryam Mirzakhani was born: an Iranian mathematician and one of the world's leading experts on geometry and dynamical systems, who died in 2017 of cancer. For her outstanding contributions, Mirzakhani was also awarded the Fields Medal in 2014, becoming the first woman and the first Iranian to receive this prestigious prize, considered the Nobel Prize in mathematics. "The gap in science has deep cultural roots, but these initiatives are very useful to understand it and to fight it," mathematician and astronomer Alessandra Celletti, who is vice-president of the National Agency for the Evaluation of the University System and Research (Anvur) and professor at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, tells ANSA.

"In the university sphere, from an initial situation of parity among those enrolled in scientific degree courses and among graduates, where indeed women outnumber men, the gap widens as one progresses towards top positions: only 29% of professors and only 24.5% of rectors are women," says Celletti, quoting data from the latest Report on the higher education and research system, published by ANVUR last March.

In recent years, however, progress has been made: for example, the figure for female graduates in Stem subjects is positive at 40.3%, five points above the European average. "We are in a phase of evolution, more and more needs to be done to help women progress in their careers, but always with incentives for excellence," emphasises the vice-president of Anvur. "Women should not be rewarded for their own sake," she reiterates, "but because there are many excellent women and these days serve to make them stand out and make them known.

More than 140 events around the world are preparing to celebrate this anniversary, and there are many planned in Italia as well. For example, the Italian Mathematical Union and the University of Genoa are jointly organising a day full of ideas: mathematics in relation to the human body and Artificial Intelligence will be discussed, mathematical puzzles and games will be played, the voices of young mathematicians will be heard and, finally, the day will end with a 'guess who' dedicated to famous female scientists. The University of Florence offers a meme-making workshop to reflect on stereotypes in mathematics, while the University of Pisa and MaddMaths! organise a training afternoon for primary school teachers on the topic of gender issues in mathematics. Also interesting is the event proposed by the University of L'Aquila and the Gran Sasso Science Institute which, through the reading of a theatrical piece on the story of Emmy Noether, an important German mathematician, ironically weaves together a critical reflection on the representation of women in science.