Women in science: a Brazilian experience through immersive narratives in 360° videos

Abstract

ABSTRACT Arts offer an engaging opportunity to bring about women's underrepresentation issues in physics. In this work, we report the creation process, production, and reception of the short 360° video entitled ‘Women in Science.’ This movie maps and portrays female researchers’ situation in physics at the University of Sao Paulo, a representative subset of the Brazilian physics community. The 360° movies are a novel way of storytelling, attracting public attention, and increasing the empathy caused by immersive experiences. The plots were based on interviews and surveys that embodied the female researcher's experiences over distinct career phases and levels. Challenges concerning the work environment, peer relationships, and the balance between work and personal life have been covered in the movie. All of them emerged in the descriptive analysis as effects that can influence women's career paths and affect their production capacity. This paper summarizes and discusses the scenes and the creative choices over the whole film production. It also reports the movie exhibition and dissemination processes by online streaming video platforms and public sessions with Virtual Reality (VR) gadgets. Based on the attendees’ spontaneous response, it is possible to conclude that the movie brought contributions and promoted discussions on gender-related issues in the academic environment. Art, combined with VR immersive narratives, has proved to be an engaging, low-cost, and reproducible way to communicate sensitive issues to the viewers. Moreover, these experiences through 360° videos can be extended to document and highlight issues from women and other underrepresented minorities in physics.