Feminist epistemologies and scientific mobility: contributions to the debate

Transnational scientific mobility. Perspectives from the North and the South

“…This is in accordance with the global literature França & Padilla, 2013;Jons, 2011), which points that men are more likely to take part in mobility program than women. In Portugal, as in other countries, due to society's patriarchal and androcentric social arrangements, family duties (domestic work; child and elderly care) are still women's responsibilities (Hochschild & Machung, 2003 women are less mobile than men because an international move implies the reorganization not only of women's personal life, but also of their families' routine.…”

“…In addition, if married or with children, they may have less bargain power to negotiate. In turn, as scientific mobility becomes more important for academic career development, the fact that women are less likely to be involved in this kind of programs, directly affects their career prospects and progression França & Padilla, 2013;Jons, 2011;Leemann, 2010). Another important characteristic of our overall sample is its youth, as the age interval between 31-40 years old represents 56%.…”

Boundary-work that Does Not Work: Social Inequalities and the Non-performativity of Scientific Boundary-work

“…The bulk of the data comes from my own ethnography of boundary-work in the SSH over the epistemic status v of women's, gender, feminist studies (WGFS) (Pereira 2013(Pereira , 2014(Pereira , 2015(Pereira , 2016(Pereira , 2017, a study which I describe in more detail below. Additional data is drawn from feminist and postcolonial research by Thais França and Beatriz Padilla, examining (through interviews) the experiences of migrant women scientists in the sciences and the SSH (França 2016;França & Padilla 2013. Their study of those experiences is part of França and Padilla's broader research on scientific migration, for which they interviewed (in 2014) a total of 80 foreign scientists working in Portugal--34 women and 46 men--across a range of science and SSH disciplines, in several public and private universities throughout the country.…”

“…To analyze how race and ethnicity affect the success of boundary-work, it is helpful to examine the links between my study and research conducted by Thais França and Beatriz Padilla with migrant women scientists in Portugal (França 2016; França and Padilla 2013, 2017). Drawing on their excellent research is instructive not just because França and Padilla explicitly focus on race and ethnicity in Portuguese academia but also because they interviewed academics from the natural and technosciences, as well as the SSH.…”

“…They quote a black scientist from Cape Verde, who explains that others’ perception of her intelligence and credibility depends on what she is producing scientific knowledge about; she is taken more seriously when making knowledge claims “about what a Cape-Verdean woman is expected to study: Africa” (França and Padilla 2017). Many of França and Padilla’s Brazilian interviewees report encountering among Portuguese academics an implicit or explicit belief that Brazilian scientists are less intelligent or hardworking and therefore less credible (França and Padilla 2013). One Brazilian woman scientist described this—supposedly complimentary—reaction from a colleague to one of her research breakthroughs:You’ve been a pleasant surprise.…”