17/04/2019

In Folha, Viana highlights the gold medal won by Brazil at the EGMO.

Reproduction of Marcelo Viana's column in Folha de S.Paulo.

Our delegation returned to Brazil on Friday (12) from the European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad (EGMO), held in Kiev, Ukraine, from April 7 to 13. Ana Beatriz Studart, 17, from Ceará, Bruna Nakamura, 16, from São Paulo, Maria Clara Werneck, 17, from Rio de Janeiro, and Mariana Groff, 17, from Rio Grande do Sul —led by Deborah Alves (SP) and Luize Vianna (RJ)— brought back an unprecedented award: a gold (Mariana, 14th position among 196 competitors) and two bronzes (Ana Beatriz and Maria Clara). Brazil finished 20th among 49 countries.

The EGMO has been held in various European countries since 2012, and Brazil has participated since 2017, through an initiative of IMPA (Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics) and the Brazilian Mathematical Society. This year it also has the support of the students' schools. To date, we have already won 9 medals and one honorable mention.

Comprehensive competitions like the Obmep (Brazilian Mathematics Olympiad for Public Schools) have a balanced participation of girls and boys, including in the second phase, in which only the top 5% from each school participate.

But this is not the case for more competitive events, such as the OBM (Brazilian Mathematical Olympiad) or the IMO (International Mathematical Olympiad). At the 2017 IMO in Rio de Janeiro, girls made up only 10%. This led IMPA to create a special award (IMPA Olympic Girls Award) for those who contributed the most to their teams, which became a permanent feature of the IMO from then on.

Even within the Brazilian Mathematical Olympiad (OBMEP), female representation among award winners is in the minority and, even worse, decreases with age. In 2018, girls made up 30% of medalists in elementary school, but only 20% in high school.

This phenomenon deserves a technical study, which has not yet been carried out, to understand its causes. But it seems clear that sociocultural factors—lack of encouragement from families and teachers, cultural barriers, lack of model cases—combine to perpetuate the misconception that "mathematics is not for women."

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