HYDERABAD: Marie Curie, Barbara McClintock, Rosalind Franklin are a few names that would pop up on your browsers if you are looking for some remarkable women in science. Despite their significant contributions, women in large numbers are hesitant to choose science-related fields as career options. According to UNESCO, less than 30 per cent of the world’s researchers are women. In India, societal expectations and gendered perceptions become a roadblock for women who want to build careers in sciences.
Ahead of International Women’s Day, CE talks to women researchers with distinctive achievements. They shared their experiences of being “women in science” and highlighted the challenges faced by them and what interventions can be made to increase representation of women in science related fields.
‘In India, the contribution of a woman is not acknowledged’
Dr Priya Hasan, an astronomer and professor of Physics at MANUU, Hyderabad, says that in India, with the added responsibility of taking care of parents besides children, makes the task of women here even more challenging than in the West. “Unfortunately in India, the contribution of a woman is not acknowledged. Often students say my mother does nothing, which is not true. Mothers work 24x7 without any holiday, salary or recognition,” she said, adding that at least in India there is an advantage that your parents help you take care of your kids.
“My mother and my husband used to travel with me to the observatory as babysitters.” Dr Hasan mentioned that in the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the representation of women is just about 20 per cent. She highlighted what is called the ‘leaky pipe problem’. “The number of girls is close to 50 per cent in undergraduate and postgraduate courses and even in PhD. But as they proceed and finish their post-docs, they get married and have kids.
The number begins to fall and finally the ones that actually get recruited is a smaller fraction of that,” she said. She highlighted that in India, there being 33 per cent reservation for women in universities, creates a perception among men that the unreserved category is somehow just meant for them. “Even in universities, as we move up the professional ladder, the number of women drastically falls. You barely have 5 per cent of women at the position of dean or directors. In astronomy also, in committees, there are barely any women members. In the inaugural meeting of the Astronomical Society of India (ASI), we had six people sitting on the dais. Of the six people, five were men and only one woman, that too, at the post of a secretary of the ASI. The person on the lowest post among those six people was a woman,” Dr Hasan said.
According to Dr Bambah, the solution lies in positive discrimination in increasing the representation of women and instead of seeing them as an ‘Other’, one should see them as colleagues. Dr Hasan encourages women to develop certain skills and get trained in a manner that employers have no choice but to hire women; if they are sure women can deliver, they would be ready to compromise on timings and other areas. For her, the concept of “work from home” has made the lives of women far easier as work hours get flexible.
‘It was not a comfortable place for women to be in Physics in the US’
Dr Bindu Bambah, who retired as a senior professor of Physics from University of Hyderabad, shared her experiences of being a student of science and also a teacher and a researcher. She did her PhD from Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago in 1983 under the supervision of Nobel laureate Prof. Yoichiro Nambu.“I grew up in an academic household, my father was a mathematician and my mother a physician. I grew up in Chandigarh, which was then, a very small town full of bureaucrats. I went to an all-girls school where the emphasis on science was very little. We didn’t have that many labs but we did have some very inspiring teachers, especially the ones who taught Physics and Chemistry. Interestingly, despite being a nun, my Physics teacher seemed to know a lot about quantum mechanics and triggered an interest in me. Not many people from my class became scientists but a lot of them became doctors. Having interest in Biology initially, I also ended up reading a lot of Physics and wanted to combine both the disciplines for my work. However, in India there was no such degree. So I opted for Physics. In the university, there were only three girls in my class.”
Dr Bambah shed light on how discrimination against women differs in Indian and in the West. “Surprisingly, I didn’t face discrimination in Punjab but when I went to the US for my PhD, I was the only girl in my class and saw discrimination against women, that too in a time when the women’s liberation movement was just coming up. It was not a comfortable place for women to be in Physics in the US. In India, it wasn’t unusual for women to be in Physics but men hesitated in accepting them in superior positions. It was okay for them as long as women followed, but a lot of resistance was seen when women became bosses,” she said, adding that she was offered the Humboldt fellowship in Germany but as she was pregnant at that time and wanted some time off until the delivery, the fellowship was rescinded. “I wrote to them that I will be joining after I have delivered my child. They rescinded the offer and said that in Germany, law says that after you give birth to a child, you can take a year off. You will not be beneficial to us as a young mother.”