Enedina Alves Marques, the first woman to graduate in engineering in Paraná and the first black female engineer in Brazil, would have turned 110 today (13). Enedina was born in Curitiba, on January 13, 1913. She graduated in Civil Engineering in 1945, from the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR). She died in 1981 and received a number of honors. This Friday she is the one who appears on the main page of Google searches. “Enedina’s pioneering spirit still inspires the presence of black women in technology-related professions,” said UFPR. According to the university, dedication to her studies and “the courage to break barriers are features present in the engineer’s history”. The biography of Enedina, who in 1940 sought to enter a professional area occupied mostly by men, was the subject of the paper for the conclusion of the history course at UFPR by student Jorge Luiz Santana. The student says, in an article, that he chose to write about her because there were few records until then. “The silencing of her name encouraged the research to problematize the reason for the lack of interest in giving visibility to a person who challenged academic and social standards by choosing an unusual profession for women at that time. Would the fact that she was black and from a poor family have been relevant for her to remain anonymous?”, he asks. Enedina is the daughter of a farmer and a maid. In the research, Santana spoke with several people linked in some way to Enedina. One of the first reports is that of Enedina’s graduation. “Her graduation was marked, essentially, as a feat of great curiosity for Curitiban society, due to the fact that she managed to cross a hegemonically male and white space”. She graduated at the age of 32, after persisting in her studies, usually in night classes, to combine them with work. Santana remembers that she suffered prejudice and persecution at the university. There were teachers who insisted on failing her. In one of the episodes where she received a low grade in an evaluation, she had to show the teacher the excerpt she used in the answer, taken from the teacher’s own book. “I said [para o professor], that what you wrote in your book is the same as what I see here. And then he didn’t like it. She showed in the book what I deduced there on the board, and the conclusion I reached are written here in her book”, revealed in a statement what Enedina said to the professor, college colleague Adelino Alves da Silva, who was the fourth black person to graduate from the engineering course at the Paraná School of Engineering, in 1947. In an article, Conradine Taggesell, the sixth woman to graduate in civil engineering, in 1956, describes the scenario for women at the time. “We were about 80 students and only three women. I was the only woman to graduate from that class, the other two colleagues unfortunately dropped out. I got along well with the teachers. At that time, engineering college was a male stronghold”. Works and tributes The Federal University of Itajubá (Unifei) has an online space for the description of the lives of personalities, of which Enedina is a part. According to the publication, after graduating in 1946, she became an engineering assistant at the State Department of Roads and Public Works. The following year, Governor Moisés Lupion transferred her to the State Department of Water and Electric Energy, where she worked on the Paraná Hydroelectric Plan and worked on the use of water from the Capivari, Cachoeira and Iguaçu rivers. Among her works as an engineer are the Capivari-Cachoeira Power Plant, the State College of Paraná and the House of the University Student of Curitiba (CEU). The Capivari-Cachoeira plant, which is the largest underground hydroelectric plant in the south of the country, is considered one of the engineer’s main works. About the work, Unifei reveals a curiosity that reflects gender inequality in the country. “Despite being vain in her personal life, during the work at the plant she became known for wearing overalls and carrying a gun on her waist to make herself respected. Energetic and rigorous, she always imposed herself, because, in addition to being a woman working in an environment mostly occupied by men, she was black ”. In 1962, Enedina retired and received recognition from the then governor Ney Braga, who, by decree, admitted the engineer’s accomplishments and guaranteed her earnings equivalent to a judge’s salary. Enedina died in 1981. A few years later, in 1988, she named an important street in the Cajuru neighborhood, in Curitiba. In 2000, she was immortalized at the Memorial to the Pioneer Woman of Paraná, in Curitiba, alongside other pioneering women in Brazil. In 2006, the Instituto de Mulheres Negras Enedina Alves Marques was founded in Maringá. Women in science Even today, women, and especially black women, face a series of challenges and inequalities in scientific careers. A report released last year by the British Council, in partnership with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco), shows that women represent almost half, 46%, of all researchers in Latin American countries. Latin and the Caribbean. As a result, the region achieved, in the last decade, gender parity in science. Even in this scenario, girls and women still face a series of inequalities with regard to access to scientific topics, in addition to suffering prejudice and gender violence in these countries. When only studies in STEM, which stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics, are considered, inequality increases. The study shows that the percentage of women researchers working in engineering and technology in the region is much lower than that of men. In some countries, such as Bolivia and Peru, this percentage is less than 20%. With regard to racial inequality in higher education, a text published by the Group of Multidisciplinary Studies of Affirmative Action (Gemaa), from the State University of Rio de Janeiro (Uerj) shows that white and yellow young people now have 2.8 times more chances of being enrolled in public higher education than black, brown and indigenous youth in 2001, to 1.6 times more chances in 2021. indigenous peoples, which puts us still far from a stage of equity that allows us to consider the end of racial quotas”, says the text.
Agência Brasil
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