Gender and ecology: the Latin American situation and its relevancy to female representation in the BES

JORGE RABINOVICH

Bulletin of the British Ecological Society

British Ecological Society

Año: 1994 p. 86 - 88

0306-8307

More than two years ago the question 'Where are the women in British ecology?'was raised (Knowlton, 1991; Wilson, 1991), and an attempt to answer itwas provided by 'Here are the women in British ecology' (Tittensor, 1991). Theobservation was simple and obvious (the reduced number ofwomen participatingin 'BES meetings) but the arguments trying to explain it were many: frompotential (unintentional or not) discrimination to preferences (women are morepractical and embrace applied ecology, which is under-represented in BES) ; fromwomen being a smaller proportion in middle and senior positions in Britishuniversities; to the fact that BES meetings are usually scheduled near Christmas(when women are cluttered by domestic responsibilities).Rather than participating in such a polemic, I preferred to analyse our 2,800people Database DECA ('Directory of Ecologists and Environmental ScientistsofLatin America, the Caribbean, Portugal and Spain') and seek (a) a descriptionofthe situation ofwomen ecologists in our.region, and (b) a possible associationwith their activities, positions, institutions, etc. For that purpose, from the 47countries included in DECA, I selected those that had at least 50 people, andused a list of nine countries: ArgentinaIojv), Mexico (446), Brazil (381), Spain(284), Venezuela (269), Chile (152), Colombia (96), Cuba (91) and the USA (84).