Resumo

Brazil is commonly known for its ethnic-racial and cultural diversity (Schwartzman, 1999). However, marginalization and underrepresentation of several social groups still persist (Nogueira; Felipe; Teruya, 2008). When focusing on ethnic-racial matters for characterizing the Brazilian postgraduate public sector, the demographic census of 2000 and 2010 reveal that black people are underrepresented within the postgraduate courses across the country (Artes, 2018). The lack of representativeness of black students is also noticeable at the micro-level on certain public universities.

In face of the debate about underrepresented groups, which shows that the Brazilian postgraduate scenario reflects racial inequalities also historically present on society, this article was conducted based on the premise that the prevalence of race and gender minorities as postgraduate students does not correlate to their distribution across the Brazilian Society. Therefore, this paper aims at providing an overview of the postgraduate students’ profile in Brazil, based on gender and race characteristics.

According to Balbachevsky (2005), in the 1930s, the Brazilian universities received the first groups of foreign professors who came for academic missions or as political refugees. They provided the first model of postgraduate studies, whose characteristics resembled the set up encountered in their home countries featuring a professor surrounded by a small group of students. From the 1950s, essential institutions were created to support both the postgraduate system and the national innovation system, such as CAPES, CNPq, research agencies and FINEP.

For the analysis, we use the latest secondary data from Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) and the two Brazilian funding agencies: CNPq and Capes. This is a descriptive paper aimed at providing an overview of the postgraduate students’ profile in Brazil, thus the data was analyzed employing descriptive statistics. According to Guimarães (2008), the objective of this technique is to summarize the main characteristics of a data set through tables, graphs, and numerical summaries, thus describing the data can be compared to taking a picture of reality.

The percentage of women and men enrolled in postgraduate courses correlates with the gender distribution in the Brazilian society, thus revealing no gender differences in this regard. However, when we shed light on knowledge areas, the differences become clear: men are the majority in hard sciences and engineering, whereas women prevail in humanities and health sciences. The students are predominantly white; black and pardos are statistically underrepresented groups within the Brazilian postgraduate system when compared to the national distribution, while yellow and indigenous people are not.

Discussions about equality between social groups should go beyond the numbers, meaning that even minorities that are currently represented must also be granted their own space in terms of culture, traditions and identity. We must think beyond the phenotypes and incorporate the feeling of belonging for these groups. This means building a new plural university that represents its structure based on the contribution of all the actors within its space.

Artes, Amélia; Unbehaum, Sandra; Silvério, Valter (orgs.) (2016). Ações afirmativas no Brasil: reflexões e desafios para a pós graduação. São Paulo: vol. 2, Cortez Editora. Artes, A. (2018). Dimensionando As Desigualdades Por Sexo E Cor/Raça Na Pós-Graduação Brasileira. Educação Em Revista, 34(0), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1590/0102-4698192454 Balbachevsky, E. (2005). A pós-graduação no brasil novos desafios para uma política bem-sucedida. Os Desafios Da Educação No Brasil, January 2009, 275–304. https://portais.ufg.br/up/67/o/Pos-Graduacao_Brasil_2.pdf