"Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn't be that women are the exception."
Nowadays representation is everything. To have someone like us, that understands our needs, our disadvantages, and our ambitions in the places where people take important decisions, not only makes us part of society and give us voice, but it also makes our dreams more achievable.
Before the first woman attended university, women couldn’t even dream about joining the academic life; before the first female engineer, this didn’t even represent a career option for women; and before a woman entered the political life, representation wasn’t even a dream.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg was the first woman to become judge of the American Supreme Court and she was the one who pronounced these words. Since history wanted her to be the exception, wanted her to be the first and to feel on her skin how the absence of someone like you in the place that counts, how hard it could be to be the first to draw the path for all the other women, how scare it could be to not have a point of reference, an example.
Today the situation seems to be different, it seems that women actually belong to every place, that their contribution is present in the decisions that involve everyone, especially themselves. But the gender gap, in particular in scientific fields, it’s still a recent subject, even if we want it to be obsolete and anachronistic. Women still struggle in making their way in a context that is still strongly male, they struggle to achieve managerial positions, to make a name for themselves.
However unfortunately, the lack of representation is an aspect that doesn’t affect only women, but a lot of minorities, that don’t see their request heard and their needs filled. And this situation not only causes a society where there are people more important that other, but, even more worrying, prevents people, children, to have dreams, that if they didn’t come true in a time signed by development in every sector, they seem impossible.