Mulheres da Química: apagamento(?) do feminino em narrativas circulantes no meio científico.

Abstract

Reliving the history of science through some subjects that constitute it, we realize that the ways in which the representativeness of their voices emerge, and the perpetuation of their legacies are presented in different ways, in the case of men and women scientists. We are constantly confronted with a scientific scenario mostly made up of men and the few women who are present in this context are in a situation of erasure, with their names, trajectories and scientific contributions ignored. Such a position of disrepute promotes a disincentive for women to do scientific work, separating women and science. Observing the faces of this silencing attributed to women scientists, we see that this scenario was generated not by a natural law, but by the materialization of discourses created and socially reinforced, with a view to placing the feminine in a place of inferiority. Thus, when we recognize the demarcating power played by circulating discourses in the social context, we trace the following research questions: what relationship exists between discourses built around the feminine and the erasure suffered by women in the History of Chemistry, more precisely in the context of discovery chemical elements? What interconnections exist between the discourses circulating in the scientific community and the difficulties experienced by women discoverers of chemical elements? Taking these trails, we aimed to analyse the discursive tangle, socially erected in relation to the feminine, and its effects on the scientific walks undertaken by different women. In order to enable the production of data, we unveiled speeches built around Lise Meitner and Marie Curie, from Foucault's Archaeology approaching. From this, it was possible to recognize how the narratives that regulate the illusory female nature were present in the trajectories of these scientists, as well as which mechanisms, supported by science, reinforce male superiority as legitimate, while guaranteeing the feminine the silencing. We conclude, therefore, that it is through a complex discursive mechanism that women are narrated in science as undesirable bodies, remaining on the margins of this fallacious enterprise, counted as disembodied and meritocratic.