A reflection on the role of women in Science, Dentistry and Brazilian Orthodontics

Abstract

Introduction: This paper reviews the history of women scientists in the ‘Western world’, whilst highlighting the persistent socio-structural issues that have led to the hiding and masking of the participation of women in Science. Further, a reflection is made of the situation of Dentistry, specifically in the field of Orthodontics in Brazil. The difference between genders is discussed, with the intention to map the progress of women in management and leadership positions, in both the academic and professional fields. Description: In Brazil, within Dentistry and Orthodontics, despite being in a numerical majority, women are still underrepresented in the area of professional leadership. This is true for Research Groups and Research Productivity; an example being the relatively low authorship of publications in a Brazilian journal of Orthodontics. They are also underrepresented as lead presenters at professional meetings, whilst there are also few female Presidents of professional organizations and associations. Conclusion: Despite being in a numerical majority, it is also important that women act in a more co-ordinated and consistent manner to achieve greater representation in these areas. The necessary changes in the structure in order to achieve this are not only of women and for women, but they must also involve the whole of society so that leadership, rights and duties are equally distributed between the genders.

Diversity of authors in the British Journal of Orthodontics and Journal of Orthodontics over the last 50 years

“…Several papers have been published on the topic of the gender and affiliations of authors, a small proportion of which are presented in Table 1. Compared to other studies of orthodontic paper authorship (Aura-Tormos et al, 2019;Collins et al, 2008;Quintão et al, 2021;Schumacher et al, 2021), the BJO/JO gender balance is similar at around a third. Compared with journals from other dental specialities, the BJO/JO gender balance is better than for prosthodontics (Kongkiatkamon et al, 2010), oral implantology (Espinosa-Giménez et al, 2023) and dental specialities overall (Yuan et al, 2010) but not as good as for paediatric dentistry (García et al, 2022) and oral health (Rajendran et al, 2021).…”

Scholarly Output in Peruvian National Dentistry according to Gender Disparity: A 10-Year Bibliometric Study

“…It is also important for women to be more active among themselves. This can involve the whole society so that there is a clear leadership equally between genders [21][22][23].…”

“…On June 7, 2021, 409 manuscripts corresponding to the period 2011-2020 were identified, which were normalized and refined by analyzing the metadata. The publications included article designs (331), review (21), letter (35), book chapter (8), and note (12) among others (Figure 1). The Scopus base was used because it is a source that houses numerous scientific journals.…”

Development and validation of a questionnaire on the feelings of undergraduate dental students regarding child dental care

“…On the other side, the higher number of female participants presented in this study is supported by the fact that most students attending dental courses in Brazil tend to be female. [41][42][43] Future studies should include a larger and more representative sample of both public and private universities to confer external validity to the study and enable the extrapolation of data.…”