How Latin American researchers suffer in science

It’s time to tackle the cumulative barriers and biases faced by scientists who aren’t from wealthy countries.

As female researchers from Latin American countries (one of us now works in the United States, the other in Argentina), we’re used to career obstacles. These range from limited funding to language barriers and the ‘tax’, in terms of time and emotional energy, incurred when under-represented groups in science participate in diversity initiatives. These barriers knit together to create problems beyond the obvious.

The current focus on diversity, equity and inclusion in science is welcome, but efforts to combat biases can lack nuance. Researchers from under-represented communities often experience the intersection of sexism, racism, and colonialism. In other words, the career barriers we face have a cumulative effect.

Our academic journeys illustrate these obstacles. Many of these multidimensional and intersectional barriers are also encountered by other early-career researchers from Latin America, especially women and scientists who are LGBTQIA+, people of marginalized sexual orientations and gender identities.

Funding barriers

Latin American countries invest significantly less in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) than do high-income countries, so the continent’s researchers have less access to grant opportunities and smaller budgets than they might elsewhere1.

This has an impact on performance in the laboratory and in the field, affecting not only the scope of the research we can do, but also limiting our attendance at international conferences, which are important opportunities for networking and creating collaborations. For both of us, the first international meetings we attended, after securing funding from the conference, became a pivotal step in our academic journey, allowing us to meet people who became mentors and long-term collaborators.

In addition, we must deal with the invisible burden of the visa application. For researchers from countries without ‘passport privileges’, attending international conferences in the global north means coping with endless paperwork that can be more time-consuming and emotionally overwhelming than overcoming the financial constraints.

More at:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02601-8