Pilar López-Sancho: “We should remain very vigilant, the rights can be taken away from you”

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Pilar López Sancho, in her office, comments with a certain modesty that she does not understand so much attention. She has been awarded the Winter 2021 Emmy Noether Award for Women in Physics, awarded by the European Physical Society (EPS), and she is both grateful and amazed. Her humility clashes with her resume. 

She is a Research Professor at the Institute of Materials Science in Madrid (ICMM), CSIC. Throughout her career, she has been in charge of the CSIC Women and Science Commission, chaired the 'Women in Physics' group of the Royal Spanish Physics Society, and is a member of AMIT (Association of Women Researchers & Technologists), an organization of which she was also president. However, when she speaks she avoids any personalism.

She insists that every achievement has not been hers, always, always, the work is shared. In fact, many things came about by chance in her life, and she does not hide or be ashamed when telling it. The roads, luckily, have as many ramifications as one wants to see them. López-Sancho, aware of her privileges, on the one hand, and disadvantages, on the other, recounts what she has learned and what she has not learned with the naturalness of someone who knows that is what life is. Here she talks about her history, science, and the society in which she lives if it is not all the same.

When did you start your university studies?
I am very old, I began to study Physics in 1970, still with Franco. It was a time when the University was, you can imagine…

How did you live it?
It was very turbulent but very fun and very interesting. You learned a lot from everything. There were movies in the halls of residence, you read... everything was very politicized, especially because of a fight for the freedoms that we didn't have. At the University we even had the Police there. The University was very revealing in that sense, we were experiencing a revolution. Francoism was coming to an end and you felt it. You dared to scream more and more.

What was it like to be a woman in a typically male science career?
We studied in separate schools. I first went to a nuns' school and then I went to an institute because there was no Bachelor of Science with the nuns, but we were all women. You couldn't see that gender bias because it was like there was no gender. But there were five girls in my class [at Physics at the Complutense University of Madrid] and, although we were much fewer than the men, we were there. We only realized that there were very few of us in practice classes when they divided us by the last name and then you did notice that there were many more boys... but I had no feeling [of a minority]. Then I have seen the figures and maybe we were 30\\\\%, but we were not so few as to feel strange.

And how did you lead with teachers?
Well, I never noticed anything. The thing is, you also may not have noticed because we all have our biases.

How was the situation when you left the University?
I did the branch of fundamental physics and at the end of the degree many wanted to dedicate themselves to theoretical physics, but there were few opportunities so everyone did what they could. Many did high school oppositions and I, with some other classmates, came to the CSIC. I did my thesis at Torres Quevedo, experimental, in surface physics.

So you went to do experimental physics where there was room

It was the year Franco died. First, you did the thesis and then, if you had good marks, they gave you the scholarship. But they didn't pay you at first. They were other times. We didn't even have Social Security. But the truth is that if you had the scholarship you were so happy. What happens in these things is that when things go wrong at work... there were months you didn't get paid, and those of us who lived at our parents' house were fine, but those who didn't...

Sure, you are from Madrid
Of course, those who couldn't live had to go. That has changed a lot. What there was then was a lot of solidarity among the scholarship holders. Like in university, when you are in front of something you are more united. And here at the CSIC, we fellowship holders in physics, letters... sometimes we had to protest to get paid.

And how did you come back to theoretical physics? 
There was a time when there began to be a lot of new surface techniques, with a lot of data to interpret, and some of us were moving on to theory, condensed matter theory. I was lucky that Juan Rubio came to the group, he was a very good theoretician and he teach us a lot.

Was it easy to start working at the CSIC?
There were tremendous years of drought, they did not call for places. In the 80s, I remember that in some documents they had to put an addendum to include all the postdoctoral fellowships we had. Those of us who could, because there were people who got married and had children, and they couldn't live with only a scholarship. The places came out around the years 82/83, but there was a plug of people... Although now there is even more stopper. It seemed to us that we were entering late, and maybe we were 34 or 36 years old, and now they are over 40 years old on average.

So you got your job in '83
Yes, then it was an Institute of Surface Physics. We were at Torres Quevedo, which was one of the venues that came together to come here [to the Cantoblanco campus]. The time when you had small children was hard. For example, as scholarship holders, we did not have the right to maternity leave.

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I wasn't going to ask you about this, but were you a mother while you were a scholarship holder?
Like many others, I had my first child when I was a scholarship holder. I was lucky that my parents lived close to the CSIC.

Sometimes we take certain rights for granted.
That's why you can't let your guard down either, because they can be taken from you. There are things you can lose. Although now I think that care has been taken, we have had an Equality Law since 2007, a great advance. But I'm telling you, it was my case and that of many other scholarship holders. It was also important that the Council had a nursery in Serrano, which it did in the time of Concepción Llaguno. That was essential, having a nursery nearby makes it easier for women to work. It is one of the important achievements of the CSIC, and it was a woman who did it. We must thank all these figures for realizing this before there was a movement because there have always been people who were aware of discrimination and what it entailed. I didn't have it then.

And when did you realize that discrimination?
Well, quite late. I was very shocked that, in 1999, MIT recognized on its website that there was discrimination in the science faculty. Women earned less, they had fewer students, and less space in the laboratories... and, shortly after, Europe published a report, the first disaggregated statistics for several European countries, and in it, it was seen that women were underrepresented and, in addition, crowded in the lower categories. There were about 11\\\% women professors when there were 35% women, and even fewer in science. That was very revolutionary.

How was the organizational process?
In 2001 there was an event at the plant organized by the Women's Institute for 8M, it was called 'the other half of science', and many ministers attended. Events are important because you become aware. For the first time, there was talk of women in science and there was a totally spontaneous booing when someone said that this discrimination against women in science was not true. So in the end, we went to the president of the CSIC, Rolf Tarrach. He told us that in a research institution promotion is decided on merit and that there could be no discrimination based on sex, but when he saw the European statistics, he proposed the creation of a working group to prepare disaggregated CSIC statistics. That is why the Council was the first body in Spain to carry them out, and the data was... more than 70% of the women on the research scale were "tenured scientist", who was then called a collaborator. He then raised the Advisory Commission of the Presidency to improve this. There was a lot of opposition, but in Europe, the Unit of Women in Science already existed and we followed suit.
Simultaneously, led by Flora de Pablo, who was also at the event, we began to work and finally founded the Association of Women Researchers and Technologists (AMIT). It's all more or less at once, in the first two thousand.

In 2002, the IUPAP (International Union of Pure and Applied Physics), as the number of people enrolled in physics around the world had dropped a lot, held an act with Unesco in Paris, which was the first meeting of Women in Physics, and they called on the societies of all countries to bring representatives. Those who were on the board of the Royal [Spanish Physics] Society called me too. There were 65 countries, it was very revealing. The president of the IUPAP attended, and the president of the APS (American Physical Society), also Nancy Hopkins, who was the one who had done the MIT study and told us how she herself could not believe the data. There we already promised that each one would go to their organization to try to create a more friendly climate for women.
The four [researchers] who went from Spain came back very convinced of that conference. I remember telling myself that this was the first time I had been in a room with 250 female physicists.

And what happened when you come back?
Fulfilling the commitment, I requested an interview with the president [of the CSIC], Rolf Tarrach, who was also a physicist, and he received me. It was a surprise. I handed him the information from the Women in Physics meeting. He was receptive and convinced that there was a problem, and his support was decisive for the creation of the Commission for Women and Science.

This is when you start to lead the movement
I don't lead either, here there was already a movement. AMIT is founded and then people thinks that this was not fashionable, that there were times when we organized an event and eight came. Now we have more importance, but then no. I, both in AMIT and in the group of women in physics, have met people from various areas with a lot of leadership and they were very convinced of the importance of equality not only for women but for the scientific world in general. That has enriched me a lot. I have learned a lot, and I have seen other things. Here, for example [for ICMM] Mar García Hernández and Alicia de Andrés have been members of the Women and Science Commission. There were many of us who were aware of discrimination.

In these years that have passed, what has been achieved, and what remains?
The atmosphere has changed. If someone says something really insulting, in other times you were embarrassed to bring it up, it was violent. Not now. When it was proposed that a woman be invited for a talk, it always had to be justified, someone would ask: 'and what has she done?'. It was not aggressive. That has changed for the better, in fact, the glass ceiling index at the CSIC has been falling, and now it is lower than the European average. However, what I have noticed in many men is a defensive attitude, a 'don't call me a macho' and they say that they have never seen discrimination. It could be expected that, in the scientific environment, the changes toward equality would have gone ahead of society, but this has not been the case, the statistics show slow progress.

And what about excellence, power, and leadership?
Excellence has been associated with the masculine, as well as power and leadership. Despite advances, it is still rare to find many women in the scientific elite. If they arrive, they are still news.

It costs them to name the woman and then respect her
It was explained by Ben Barres [scientist who transitioned at age 40]. He himself recounted that in the first seminar he gave as a man, a friend of his heard those behind him say that he was better than his sister Barbara, which was her old name. He was a very good scientist, and he noticed that when he became Ben they held him in higher regard than when he was Barbara. The anecdote is from 2010, but at times you can still notice paternalism.

And how do we change this?
Patiently explaining it. You can't offend either. There is such a variety of situations, education, feelings, what you have seen in your house... you are not aware of how all this affects our behavior.

A conclusion?
Spanish society in general and the scientific world have changed a lot so far in the 21st century. The work methods are different and we have tools that make research easier. The new generations have to pick up the torch and transform science. With respect to sustainability and diversity, following the recommendations of the European Commission, include the sex/gender dimension in the research. They have the responsibility of achieving a more objective science with useful results for all humanity. I'm sure they'll get it.

-- Ángela R. Bonachera / ICMM Communication Unit --