Diana Escobar Vicent: "Knowledge empowers and sets us free"

Diana Escobar
07/02/2023 - 18:47 h - Science Ajuntament de Barcelona

We share the interview that La Fábrica del Sol has published on its website, within the section Fars del Sol that the team of the technical secretariat of the Environmental Equipment Network of Barcelona (XEAB).

Diana Escobar is a biologist and pianist, but as a child she imagined herself as a veterinarian. She has been working for years in the cultural field linked to science. She combines her scientific facet, which she never abandons, with her facet as a cultural manager, which she uses to bring knowledge closer to the public. Escobar worked at the Barcelona Institute of Culture as head of the Barcelona Science programme, which was the seed of many of the projects she currently coordinates at the Department of Science and Universities of Barcelona City Council. This conversation is framed within the framework of the Day of Girls and Women in Science, 11 February.

There is a lot of talk about awakening a scientific vocation in girls. Did you feel it when you were a child?

I was born into a family with strong ties to culture, both music and audiovisual arts. I had no direct reference to science at home. But, nevertheless, they were very restless, very curious and very eager to know. And surely this is the part that most influences when deciding whether you want to take one path or another.

I studied music, but I remember that when I was very young I imagined myself being a vet. Then I didn’t end up becoming a vet and I don’t think that’s what I should have done, on the contrary. I think you change, mature and end up doing other things. Finally, I studied Biology, although at some point I thought about becoming an archaeologist, which is another of my great passions! Everything is closely related to knowledge and discovery. I think I was influenced by the desire to know that I had at home.

And how did you feel as an adult working in the scientific profession? Did you feel discriminated against or frustrated in a very masculine field?

When I started working as a biologist I was in a fairly gender-balanced environment. And throughout my professional career, both as a biologist and later in science dissemination projects, I have moved in a largely female environment. This is not the case for everyone. It is also true that the sector in which I have always worked, which is the cultural sector, has a lot of female representation.

I have never heard that I was discriminated against for being a woman. Also because I am lucky enough to work for the public administration, which has a whole equality plan. But even when I started, when that plan was not so evident, I already encountered this circumstantially. Unfortunately, not everyone can say the same, but I hope that this will happen less and less. Although I am a realist and I know that there are still many sectors where it is not lived in the same way.

There are many areas where there is an imbalance in leadership positions: there are many women doing great work in the background. In terms of skills and knowledge, there is a balance because there are very powerful women. It’s a question of bringing them to the fore!

Will we find parity in the panels of the City and Science Biennial programme, which has not yet been made public?

Definitely. There is a deliberate desire for gender balance. Right now we are around 53% women. But I want to emphasise that this balance does not exist because they wanted to prioritise women over men, but because, as I said before, there are women who are doing a magnificent job, who are working at the highest level and the Biennial’s programme reflects this. It is not a question of making an effort to meet a few numbers, but of looking at and detecting this potential that is invisible in the field of science and research. If the Biennial can contribute to anything, it is to make visible these women who are doing such great work.

Can you give us an exclusive or a name?

We will wait until 9 February, when the programme will be made public. But I will tell you that there will be some very interesting people. People who work in international fields, but also many people who work in our country, at the national level. In other words, it will be a very diverse programme with the gender balance we were talking about.

I would also like to emphasise that it will not only be people who are dedicated to research in the health or environmental sciences, but we will also have many women who come from the artistic field and who are committed to working in art alongside science.

Returning to the practice of the profession, 41% of researchers in Catalonia in 2019 were women. Do you think enough is being done to increase these figures? What more could be done?

I identify three different stages: people’s motivation to dedicate themselves to a specific professional field, training and the possibility of dedicating themselves professionally. And they are not necessarily linked to each other. If we talk about health sciences or environmental sciences, for example, there is a high percentage who start training.

However, if we talk about fields related to experimental sciences, mathematics or engineering, there are fewer girls at all three stages. In other words, there is no uniform picture. On the other hand, it is not so clear that many of them end up making a professional career and what is the extent of this trajectory?

I think that these three stages are fundamental, motivation, the first one, but it is not only that, it is necessary that they can consolidate their professional career and work for this gender balance in the last stage. To contribute as a society to making it visible at the highest levels in each of the fields of knowledge that there are also equally valid women. It is necessary to create female role models so that younger women can see that there is a way and that it is possible to get there.

Who have been your favourite women scientists?

There are names of female role models that come to mind. From Hypatia, through Marie Curie and Rita Levi Montalcini to more recent ones, such as Jane Godall. There have always been women who have broken the mould. But I would say that I have been much more influenced by the women I have been close to and worked with than by the models.

I have been lucky enough to work in an environment with women who stand out in many ways: intellectually, for their strong personality, very creative. And I think this is one of the most stimulating things. That is to say, that references are important and we have to look for them, but I personally have been nourished much more by the environment and that natural permeability that makes you learn and take advantage of the energies, talent and strength of the people around you.

Does any part of the Biennial’s programme aim to make women scientists visible or to awaken the vocation we were talking about at the beginning?

In the Biennial the gender balance and the gender perspective is transversal. That is to say, it is not that a specific proposal has been chosen to make women scientists visible (which is also there) but that it is a question that permeates the entire programme.

On the other hand, what the curators and the management wanted to do was to reflect the lives of the people who do science: to show the human side of the people who dedicate themselves to research in order to find out how they live science. And in this sense, there are some proposals that focus on the voices of women in science and on the approach to knowledge from their perspective.

Finally, what would you say to girls and young women who want to go into science?

I would tell them, both those who already know they want to go into science and those who don’t know yet, that approaching knowledge is one of the most powerful things you have. If you have knowledge, you have many elements to move forward, to make proposals, to get ahead and, above all, to help others: to contribute to the society in which you live.

Knowledge empowers and sets us free. As women, we can do anything we set our minds to, of course, because we have the capabilities. And the field of knowledge is very broad and we can approach it, either through research or by bringing that knowledge closer to society through scientific dissemination. There are many possible trajectories from science and all of them are exciting!

Source of the interview: La Fàbrica del Sol