Today, Mediterranean women are main actors of this process. Not Greek, Italian, Egyptian or Maghreb women as such but rather as part of a group with distinctive features making them differentiate from their foremothers. Indeed, they are able to relate tradition to modernity and to manage with troubled situations.
They have been able to gain room for man oeuvre and access to corridors of power. They have been brave enough to denounce corruption even at cost of their own lives. They are more independent than it might seem but they are also able to emphasize positive aspects of tradition. They are able to face economic and geopolitical troubles and to build solidarity networks with the aim of caring for others rather than fighting them.
In this new context, women are making significant steps forward in the world of research and their representation is much higher than it was in the past century. Nevertheless, this phenomena rises a series questions about future prospects.
People say that “science has changed the world” but what changes will women involvement in scientific research bring in? Moreover, interaction between world economic and political dynamics really effect science and a growing number of women is working in universities, research institutions and laboratories scattered all over the world and not only in Northern Europe and America. Despite the persisting gender inequality gap, are still women behind men scientists? Or are they reaching a more and more leading and effective role, as Bice Fubini (Torino University – Italy) wrote? If so, as the growing number of women Nobelists seems demonstrating, what will be the consequences of these new circumstances, also considering the world economic crisis and the political transformation of Middle East and North Africa? How will the growing difficulties of research activities in Southern Mediterranean Countries and the “scientific renaissance” of other emerging states such as Morocco and Turkey impact women’s employment levels and their economic independence?
Women in this part of the world, both veiled or wearing miniskirts, are among those people exercising the right and duty to practice critical exploration and the method of doubt that can lead them to acquire the “scientific citizenship”.
Monotheisms born in the Mediterranean region have generally fixed women’s role as mares and nurses. How will the new position women are acquiring in the world of research impact culture? What will be the consequences of the spread of their critical thought throughout society?
On the Mediterranean seabed hundreds of thousands of bodies lie buried. They were refugees, exiled people that crossed it to escape from their countries devastated by wars or famine: those people we today call “immigrants”. Today, scientific research can be put at the service of “Peacekeeping Operations” to work out sustainable development rather than armaments development. Women will be main actors of these processes and if financial actors will be able of shaping long-term rather than short-term strategies, oasis of knowledge and positive engagement will bloom within the Mediterranean region.