The International Day of Women and Girls in Science is celebrated on February 11. This date aims to highlight all women and girls who thrive in science and to raise awareness of the gender gap that still exists. Implemented by UNESCO and the United Nations (UN) eight years ago, this very special date has been promoted and celebrated every year since then. Being a company intrinsically related to science, we are proud to celebrate this date and every woman who works at ASCENZA.
Meet some of ASCENZA's Women in Science
Patricia Cesarino, ASCENZA Brazil Marketing & Technical Coordinator, is an agronomist but the path towards agriculture wasn’t always clear. Even though she had always been interested in sciences and connected to biology, the preferred path was animal nutrition. Nevertheless, she ended up falling in love with production and plant protection.
Patricia admits that the agricultural sector is still predominantly a male sector, but that over the last few decades there has been a growing number of women in it. Nowadays more and more women are entering the agronomy world and developing important leadership roles. The sector is renovating itself and modern society is also helping to drive this change. Regardless of acknowledging this, Patricia still sees lots of opportunities for improvement as the path towards gender equality has just started. Her opinion is that her generation is “building a future of equality so that next generations can put same level efforts for similar results, regardless of gender”.
Unlike Patricia, Michaela Sachetti has always felt agronomy has a natural choice for her career path. The Marketing Manager of ASCENZA Italy chose this course from a passion born in the family, through the family business of agriculture and agrochemicals. Her heritage, naturally, made the choice obvious.
However, it wasn’t easy for Michaela since women's representativity in agriculture was very low. In her sharing, she says she belongs to a generation "where, until 15 years ago, she was almost the only woman in the agro-chemical world," so it was very difficult to get the confidence of her stakeholders.
Michaela believes that integrating more women is an opportunity for this sector. It's a different way of thinking, which can bring new management approaches.
Still in southern Europe, Carmen Montes, Marketing Manager of ASCENZA Spain, shares a similar experience with her Italian colleague. Carmen tells us that 15 years ago, only a few women were technical agronomists, and it was hard sometimes to be recognized. However, that didn't make her change her mind about farming, because Carmen believes that the secret is also " not to be afraid of failure". The choice for agronomy has always felt natural, as she’s always been a sciences girl with a passion for agronomy. She grew up in a rural place where agriculture plays a very important role, being the main economic supply of the region.
Nowadays, she doesn’t feel differences and she feels valued as the professional she is by the sector in general.
Inês Coimbra didn’t choose agronomy, but she ended up in the agriculture sector because agriculture isn’t only made of agronomists. Inês works at the formulation development laboratory and she’s MSc in Biological and Chemical Engineering.
For Inês, the choice for sciences, especially biology (plants), has always been obvious as she would be mesmerized by those classes and not feel it as an obligation. She also considers curiosity one of the main characteristics that led her towards this path.
Inês shares that she has never felt difficulties in integrating into the sector by being a woman. In her opinion, the most important for companies is not the gender, but the success and it is always achieved through the participation of different people and modus operandi.
