“Women in Research have an edge, but they still pay for the legacy of the culture of the hearth”

February 11 is celebrated the World Day of Women in Research and Sciencean anniversary established in 2015 byUnited Nations Assembly in order to promote the gender equality within scientific.

Although there have been many in recent years female scientists who have made a fundamental contribution to researchin Italy this is important gender gap it does not seem to have been filled and indeed gender equality, especially in the workplace, still appears very far away.

This is confirmed today by the investigation Inclusion conducted by Astra Research for Gilead Sciences, a Californian biopharmaceutical company that has been researching and developing innovative drugs to contribute to the health of the world for over thirty years. The results of the study, which involved a representative sample of the Italian population, clearly show how according to Italians, women have limits when it comes to access to professions and the world of work. Blame their lack of strength, stamina and physical ability according to the 46.9% of the interviewees or of their character, for 27.9%. So that one in four women he believes that a career, political leadership, higher earnings from work are “naturally” a greater prerogative of men.

Not only that: the survey also shows that over one in five Italians think that if both work in a heterosexual couple, it is right that man has greater opportunities for professional growth. Gender prejudices, in short, also linked to education: according to what emerged from the survey, one in 5 Italians still maintains that girls who love to play with “typical” children’s games, such as robots or constructions, and children who love those “typical” of girls, such as dolls and toy kitchens, they will grow confused in their minds about the roles of women and men.

So what is the role of women today in the field of scientific research?

We talked about it with Doctor and researcher Miriam Lichtner, Head of the Infectious Diseases Department of the Goretti Hospital of Latina, associate professor at the La Sapienza University of Rome And several times winner of the Fellowship Program calls promoted in recent years by Gilead with the aim of rewarding and supporting scientific research.

As head of the infectious diseases department of the Goretti hospital in Latina, she has been at the forefront of managing the health emergency since the beginning but has also been involved in scientific research. What did it represent to participate and win the Fellowship Program calls for competitions?
«The competition announcement is a great opportunity: I have won several in recent years together with my clinical research group. During the pandemic, then, support for scientific research became even more important and therefore made this type of initiative crucial “.

What were the latest awarded research projects?
«The last project concerned the patients with hepatitis C, in particular those key populations, such as patients with drug addiction, in which the infection, which today is treatable with the latest generation drugs, continues to spread widely. The goal was to create a network between hospital and territory, to facilitate screening and taking care of these subjects who normally have less access to treatment. The previous project, on the other hand, was linked to the field of applied and laboratory research, and interested HIV positive women through the analysis of predictive factors of therapeutic success, also concentrating the laboratory data in reference to the sexual health of the woman“.