Affirmative action: Not yet mainstream in graduate science

Individuals’ stories and studies released in the past several years indicate that affirmative action policies have not yet become mainstream in graduate science education in Brazil, writes Rodrigo de Oliveira Andrade for Nature.

More than half of Brazil’s 203 million inhabitants identify as black, mixed-race or indigenous. Still, white individuals currently represent 90% of Brazilian scientists – a proportion 12 times higher than that of black, mixed-heritage and indigenous individuals combined, according to a study by researchers at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. “These groups are minorities in almost all fields of the hard sciences,” says co-author Marcia Rangel Candido.

To try to correct these inequalities and promote equity in historically marginalised minority groups, graduate programmes first began to implement affirmative action policies in the 2000s, some on their own initiative and others as a requirement under state laws and university resolutions. The movement gained traction in 2016, when the government started to require federal higher education institutions to submit proposed measures for including black, mixed-race, indigenous and disabled people in their graduate programmes. As a result, the percentage of graduate programmes in Brazil with affirmative action rose from 26% in 2018 to 54% in 2021, according to a 2022 analysis. Yet such initiatives have been unevenly distributed across academic fields.
Full report on the Nature site