The exhibition “Life as a scientist” presents the faces and the competences of some of the greatest Italian women scientists, protagonists of the “100 women against stereotypes” project that was created to highlight female expertise in sectors still perceived as male dominated.
Bracco Foundation is continuing in 2019 the cycle of exhibitions at the CDI - Centro Diagnostico Italiano. This year the exhibition “Life as a scientist”, held from January 15 to June 30, 2019, presents the faces and the competences of some of the greatest Italian women scientists, protagonists of the “100 women against stereotypes” project that was created to highlight female expertise in sectors still perceived as male dominated.
The series of portraits, by the famous photographer Gerald Bruneau, was conceived and implemented by Bracco Foundation to help overcome prejudices in scientific practice which the collective imagination still views, incorrectly, as strictly masculine.
Female biologists, chemists, pharmacologists, engineers, astrophysicists, mathematicians, surgeons, palaeontologists, computer scientists: these are just some of the professions with female scientists at the highest levels. Observing each portrait is like crossing a threshold into protected and private environments, places of research and thought. These are the places of work of the female experts: laboratories, universities, surgeries where every day women and men are committed to advancing the frontiers of knowledge.
On the occasion of the Italian Research Day in the World, an initiative organized by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation in partnership with the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research, the Embassy of Italy in Washington D.C. decided to host on April 2019 the photographic exhibition.
Several studies on the female presence in the information media show that women are rarely called in by the media as experts. It is almost always men who explain and interpret the world: in 82% of cases according to the Italian results of the Global Media Monitoring Project 2015. To help attain equal opportunity, with merit as the criterion for career and visibility, in 2016 the “100 women against stereotypes” project was created from an idea by the Pavia Observatory and the Gi.U.Li.A. Association in collaboration with Bracco Foundation and with the support of the Representation of the European Commission in Italy.
Alongside the online databank and to volumes published by Egea that present the excellent profiles of female experts in various sectors of knowledge, Bracco Foundation is proposing today, with this photographic exhibition, a complementary account with the aim of bringing the public closer to the female face of research through some of the greatest Italian female scientists today, and at the same time portray sciences beauty, accessibility and, why not, enjoyment.
The cycle of exhibitions started in 2010 in collaboration with the CDI is renewed every year in the conviction, backed by scientific evidence, that exposure to art and culture helps an overall improvement in the quality of life.
