Women in research - Part 1/2 "Girls learn not to be interested in science"

There are still far fewer women working in science. Lea Caminada is a particle physicist at CERN. She believes that the problem has to do with entrenched structures and suppressed dreams.

Girls dream of becoming princesses, vets or scientists. It wasn't quite like that for Lea Caminada, but she is one of the women in science today. There are still far fewer of them in research than men.

According to the Federal Statistical Office (FS O), although their share has been steadily increasing since the beginning of 2000, in 2021 the proportion of women in Swiss research teams was 37.5 percent.

And it is also clear that the proportion of women decreases the higher up the scientific career ladder you go. Caminada agrees, as she says in an interview with blue News: "The proportion of women is more balanced during your studies, but later on in your career you meet far fewer women."

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As a child, Caminada had no clear idea what it meant to be a particle physicist. "I didn't have a job description in my mind's eye, but I just followed what interested me and one thing led to another."

The ETH-trained particle physicist believes that the low proportion of women in science is also linked to the unconscious bias effect, which she says has been proven and is evident, for example, in the fact that men's names are judged differently when applying than when a woman's name is on the dossier. "The fact that most or many of the managers are men also plays a role."

However, Caminada has never felt directlydisadvantaged in her job. There are often comments that she has to put up with.

"It's frustrating that women statistically have a smaller chance of getting a job, but as you can see from my example - where there's a will, there's a way. You can achieve great things as a woman, and I personally am very happy with where I am today and what I have achieved."

Large detectors for small particles

Caminada has done a lot for research. She is a physics professor at the University of Zurich and works as a researcher at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Villigen AG. There she was part of the research team that worked on the construction of the innermost part of the CMS detector, the so-called pixel detector.

Caminada is particularly proud of this achievement. The pixel detector was used for an important event in 2012 and is still doing important work today: that was when the so-called Higgs boson was discovered at the European Particle Physics Laboratory (CERN) in Geneva.

Caminada's everyday life has a lot to do with particles and their collision. She explains: "The idea of particles is very old and already existed in the days of the ancient Greeks, who imagined that everything was made up of atoms." Researchers are looking for the smallest building blocks there are, so to speak. And researching these very, very small particles often requires very, very large machines.

"The CMS detector is 15 meters high and 22 meters long. And the particle accelerator at CERN that we use is a 27-kilometre-long ring that is 100 meters underground."

"Girls shouldn't be discouraged"

When Caminada mentions to people that she works at CERN, most of them show great interest and ask eager questions. But if she simply mentions that she is a physicist, the reactions are very different. "Many then adopt a defensive attitude and think that they wouldn't understand anything about it anyway."

She notices this behavior more often among women in particular. The Zurich native believes: "Society has taught them that they shouldn't be interested in science."

Caminada believes that this should start at a young age. "I would advise girls to stick with it and not get discouraged." This is because, although many are interested in numbers at a certain point, they eventually lose this curiosity because they are told that it is not important for them to be able to do maths.

"Children want to know how things work, and I believe that the basic interest is there in all children - regardless of whether they are boys or girls."

For those interested, there would be children's lectures or open days at CERN, PSI or the University of Zurich. Caminada says: "There is a general change in thinking and a new departure. In the scientific environment, there is currently a greater awareness of the need to change structural things." A lot of things are happening right now, but a lot still needs to be done to achieve gender balance.

The model of international cooperation

For the future, the Zurich native hopes that the world will return to common sense. She draws a comparison with international research collaborations such as the CMS project, in which researchers from all over the world work together to answer big unanswered questions.

"I hope that people will learn to be more peaceful with each other again and stick together. As you can see here at CERN or at the UN, the model of international cooperation can work." And according to Caminada, it shouldn't matter whether it's a man or a woman.

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