“Paperina and scientific selection”: a cartoon strip to tell of female competences

On International Women’s Day Bracco Foundation presents the project in partnership with Panini Comics to recount to a younger public female science with a cartoon strip in the Italian weekly Topolino.

The story “Paperina and scientific selection”, appearing in number 3354 of Topolino on the newsstands from March 4, 2020, centres on making the most of female scientific competences and pays tribute to two great female Italian scientists: robotics expert Barbara Caputo and chemist Luisa Torsi -with two leading characters together with Paperina and the Club delle Ragazze di Paperopoli. The story takes us to the famous city of ducks where Paperina invites to scientists of the Quack Foundation in Calisota Valley who succeed in winning over with their accounts and discoveries not just the goals of the club but also Archimede, Paperoga and all the other inhabitants.

The two scientists are part of the online databank 100esperte.it, the project conceived by the Pavia Observatory and Associazione Gi.U.Li.A., with development by Bracco Foundation and the contribution of the European Commission Representation in Italy to increase the visibility of competences beyond gender stereotypes.

The initiative is part of the “Talents of women” program promoted by the Municipality of Milan with the support of Bracco Foundation to present with a multidisciplinary and inclusive approach a look at the female role in the various creative disciplines, underlining social instances of change.

The weekly will be distributed, thanks to the foundation, in the 300 elementary and middle schools in Milan, so that the school libraries can make the publication available to their students, and will also be distributed, in April 2020, to the 800 children taking part in STEMintheCity, the Milan municipality programme for the distribution of STEM subjects.