This paper draws upon on-going research into the changes taking place in the Brazilian vehicle assembly industry with particular reference to the state of Rio de Janeiro. It focuses upon a case study of Volkswagen's bus and truck assembly plant at Resende. The plant opened in 1996 on a green-field site and was presented as a major development in vehicle assembly. The unique feature of the plant's production system rests on the relationship between the assembler (VW) and its component suppliers. At Resende these were involved in a joint enterprise to establish a `modular system' of production. In this system, the component suppliers finance a part of the factory and organise the assembly of their components on site. As such few of the production workers are employed by the assembler whose main role in the process is to co-ordinate production and market the vehicle. The article outlines the nature of the Resende system and the negotiations and comment that accompanied its introduction. It considers the development in relation to literatures on the boundary and capacity of the firm and those relating to the role of labour in mature labour processes. In drawing upon wider changes in the Brazilian vehicle manufacturing sector it argues that the Resende experiment can be understood as an extreme case of a more general development in Brazil, involving changed relationships between assemblers and component suppliers and also with the manual workers. Some consideration is given to the idea of an emerging `Brazilian system' of production and its implication for more general developments within the sector.
Here we described two activities related to Women in Science: one main conference and one symposium, both developed during the Annual Congress of the Brazilian Physiological Society, which were held within the XXXIII Annual Meeting of the Federation of Brazilian Experimental Biology Societies, from September 3–6, 2018, in Campos do Jordão (SP/Brazil). This conference and the symposium were among the most popular activities of the congress. This is important because the activities addressed important issues, including the fact that only 29% of the worlds’ researchers are women, and women have difficulty progressing in a scientific career. Our report discusses why and which strategies could change this reality. We believe this symposium has not only contributed to advance and bring insights to physiological sciences, but, more importantly, it inspired and motivated physiologists to think about gender balance and the contribution and participation of women in physiological science.
This article performs an analysis of female participation in science, in the Brazilian system of graduate studies and scientific research as a case study. This is relevant because science is a central supporting structure for modern societies and, therefore, a detailed analysis of the scientific power structure behind academic policy creation can reveal aspects of androcentrism in scientific activity. The main goal of this work is to identify the process of misogyny in science by describing its reproductive pattern. Our results show that women are around 50% of the undergraduate and graduate students when all fields are taken into consideration, but only 37% of the researchers in the CNPq system. We also observe a significant increase in female percentage within scientific activities at the initial and intermediary levels, except for the most prestigious areas as hard science. However, a scissor effect is identified between the initial level and the more prominent positions. This unbalanced participation reveals that female occupations in science are mostly as lower workforce since women are quite far from the social decision-making circles in this career
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