Brazilian physicists community diversity, equity, and inclusion: A first diagnostic

We report the results of a survey applied to students and professionals in the area of physics in Brazil, pursuing to draw a portrait of the composition of this community in terms of the social markers of difference age, race, ethnicity, geographical origin, sex, gender, sexual orientation, and disabilities. The main goal was to quantify the representativeness of different groups in the community and to detect motivations and difficulties encountered by each group throughout their studies and career. This survey was open to the members of the Brazilian Physics Society from July to September 2018. Our outcomes reveal that (i) the Brazilian physicists community is poorly diverse even in comparison with the population composition, (ii) the main obstacle to pursue the career is socioeconomic vulnerability, and (iii) harassment is high in our society, being more pronounced among women. We hope that these results will be useful to scientific and educational institutions to develop different strategies and policies to change this current situation.

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Figure 1

Current state of residence versus state of birth. The gray scale represents the number of individuals. Brazilian states (two letter code) were ordered by latitude of their capital. From the respondents, 1594 are Brazilian and 1659 live in Brazil.

Figure 2

Profile of the respondents according to ethnicity or race (a), sex (b), gender (c), and sexual orientation (d).

Figure 3

Percentage of respondents vs highest degree attained, separated by race or ethnicity group (top) and by sex (bottom). In the legend, $\mathrm{NA}/\mathrm{NC}=\mathrm{prefer}$ not to answer or classify themselves. Recall that physics education and bachelor’s correspond to undergraduate degrees at the same level.

Figure 4

Motivations for choosing physics. Histograms showing the number of (nonexclusive) responses associated with each possible motivation given in a list, according to the level of identification (very, little, not at all). Horizontal lines are drawn as references.

Figure 5

Causes of difficulties. Number of (nonexclusive) responses for each factor associated with negative influence or discrimination of the respondent or colleagues given in the caption. Horizontal lines are drawn as references.

Figure 6

Percentage of respondents reporting sexual or moral harassment.

Figure 7

Distribution of occupation of the respondents. The initials in the abscissa axis correspond to the following categories: lecturers and/or researchers in higher education institutions (T/R-HE), scholarship holders (SH), multiple occupations (MO), without work nor scholarship (WW/WS), high school teachers (T-HS).