good afternoon almost good evening the
plan of my dialogue with you is to try
and discuss the issue of gender equity
for women in stem and what you know what
the issue is why do we want to change it
and what roles institution and society
can play so you know the first question
that people can ask here is that what's
so special about women in stem party
stem stem is science technology
engineering and mathematics now most of
us would say that yes indeed
mainstreaming gender in all walks of
life is a need of the hour so that we
can harness the potential of almost the
50% of the humanity most effectively but
then what is special about women in STEM
why do you want to talk about them
separately
the reason is women in science because
of the demands of the career in science
in fact have some very specific extra
challenges and hence this separate
narration but then you can also ask me
the question Who am I to talk about it
the point is that I have been as was
told a woman in science doing
theoretical particle physics for about
four decades and out of this the last
two decades I have been involved in
women in science so that's my locust
angle now before I start talking of the
subject I want to tell you a story I am
giving you this talk in this city of
Pune which is called Oxbridge of
Maharashtra and in this city in 1800 and
44 was the first school vernacular
school for girls that was founded by
sorry three by full a after whom the
university that's a few kilometers from
here has been named and in 1886 the
first female English school was founded
here and in fact I am a student of that
school many many decades later I was
born in Pune I was brought up in Penang
and
was brought up in a family with three
other sisters with her and brought up by
a mother whose father about the century
ago promised her that he will not marry
her get her married before she finishes
a school education so what's the point
of this all the point of this all is
that I actually studied and Ray was
raised in a city in a family which
thought that women education is
completely a rightful thing but even
then education for a girl in science was
not high priority because in fact I did
not study science
I passed seventh grade so obviously it's
clear that in times much before this and
in places other than pulling the
atmosphere was even more discouraging
for a girl to study science or for a
woman to do science but however there
were many many impressive women who were
not deterred by think you have seen some
of the pictures photographs going around
when I was being introduced and one of
them is the first Indian woman doctorate
in science Jana camel she was also the
first director general of the of
zoological and botanical survey of
independent India now this journey from
a woman of an education from 1844 to
women in science took about 100 years
just to sort of set stage today you
might have seen on Google Google is
celebrating the first paper published in
Philosophical Transactions by a woman
called Mary Somerville this is the lady
who actually defined what science means
this is just a site record as to where
we are what are the things happening in
the rest of the world women in
technology to quite some time but when
they arrived there rang with a bank and
this particular eye conical picture of
sari-clad flower wearing women
congratulating each other for nothing
else what else
wonderful and successful functioning of
Mars orbiter but in spite of all of this
the fraction of women in science in
India it's a rather Denise Kuehl number
I am a scientist so I should give you
real numbers instead of saying small and
big so here are the numbers so in India
actually the fraction of girls in
education and I'm doing only here
undergraduate masters and PhD I am being
elitist here so you see that about forty
forty percent thirty percent you see
large number of women actually go from
undergraduate to the MSC to PhD these
percentages are rather high but now
after PhD what happens next you see that
in the postdoc level there is a jump
down when I think of permanent faculty
members it goes down even further and if
I think in terms of women who are high
achievers or who are science
administrators it goes down to even
further four percent again if you look
at today's window there is a comment by
the current Secretary of the Department
of Biotechnology and the reporter has
mistaken the gender of the Department of
Department secretary but of course he's
not to be blamed because in 95% of the
time sued his his or her choice of
gender would have been right on the
other hand my choice of gender for the
reporter would have been right only 50
percent so this kind of tells you really
the small numbers of women in Indian
science this part is unusual to occur
I'm different from other countries so in
India too
we don't need to attract girls to stem
they come they excel but what we have to
worry about is the steep fall and this
precipitous fall is what we need to
worry about this is what we actually
share with the rest of the world but
this is where things are actually good
with us so some of you can ask that this
loss of trained scientific movement
power why am I talking so much about it
okay actually I have had arguments when
people have told me anyway these women
become very good teachers for their
children so this is a good use of their
training but actually apart from the
sheer engines
of that statement I think it matters
that we need to really worry about this
fall for other very pragmatic reasons
because this fall means that we don't
get good returns for our investment one
rupee spent on a scientific work
research training of a woman we get back
only twenty to thirty percent and no
country which wants to move on the path
of innovation can afford to do that so
to me this is just plain economic sense
that we must avoid this fall and more
important than that not really not more
but equally important is the fact that
inclusivity and the diversity in
research careers actually breathes in
more to the research and an example is
there is a artificial intelligence
researcher joy Boland vini and she is in
MIT she performed research and she found
that the algorithms voice recognition
algorithms fail 35% of the times when
they are tried on African American women
why because the people who are
developing them white Caucasian males
trained them only on white Caucasian
male photographers I rest my case
so what I'm trying to tell you that stop
in this precipitous fall is not just
good for women it's good for science
it's good for our country so this is
something we all must want to do but
then before we try to stop it we need to
know what are the reasons and there are
two very simple visible and obvious
reasons one of them is the one that I
said is specific to science what happens
is that with any other degree you get a
degree you start a job you become a
doctor maybe in a two years time you
become a practicing surgeon or a
practicing whatever you want to do but
with a career in science it's actually
after your PhD that your real work
begins you need to you know you need to
set establish yourself you need to
sculpt your own place you need to find
your owns niche and it is also the time
when you must also have children because
the body clock is ticking
so both the clocks a-ticking science
doesn't wait for anybody but nor does
the body and that's perhaps one of the
things that's very different for sign
women in science than for anybody else
and then there are other reasons which
are family and career balance which are
more or less the same for all the other
sisters who are also trying to achieve
something in the other spheres and the
family and career balance I think it's
really something the various it's
controlled more or less the challenges
are controlled by our expectations and
expectations which are actually enforced
by upbringing and many of us think that
this is all I have produced this picture
which was treated by a Mahindra and you
know they already think that this is all
that women we need to help women to
overcome but actually first I told you
women in science actually begin a little
bit before so that's first problem and
the second point is this is not all this
is not at all all why because there are
many things which I call invisible bias
and not just I royal society of in
London also has identified this now what
is this invisible bias I can go on
listing I don't have the time but I can
tell you in my opinion all the invisible
biases essentially are due to a lack of
importance that society and scientific
community gives to women's participation
in scientific research and a science
career okay that is really the point the
first point that is the in the eyes of
the society since research is not
important you know I'll tell you
something simple a mother-in-law will
very merrily look after the children
when the daughter-in-law is a you know
high-flown gynecologist and who is
invited in the middle of the night to
deliver her baby and she will be even
proud of it but she will not understand
why the same daughter-in-law has to go
to the laboratory to look after her draw
Sofia fights in the flies in the middle
of the night she would try to tell her
to change her area of research okay so
that is what is the problem the problem
is also effects the mentorship that
women get I have seen examples of
and I've seen how positive or negative
mentorship directly implies that a
person will stay in the field and grow
or go away role models are a third very
important thing and many of my
contributors to Lila were these
daughters have listed help from extended
family as well as equally well the the
mentorship from senior professional
colleagues as two things that help them
move onwards so clearly it works these
are small things that individuals
institutions people can do and these are
small things that help this stop this
drop off another invisible bias is joint
careers dual careers in fact the
standard statement is we do not hire
couples together in fact two Nobel
laureates that I know us marry ago Pat
Maher and Rosalind yellow both of them
actually were not immune to this problem
and it is this issue that I think the
Institute's can really be very sensitive
to this is something that the Institute
can look at very carefully
the third invisible bias that you can
think about is also about lack of
recognition or delayed recognition I can
talk about rosalind Franklin I can talk
about Vera Rubin I can talk about
Jocelyn Bell not that these recognitions
and awards are they are important for
the women concerned but even more
important is that they lack of these
rewards reinforce the Canino the import
lack of importance of women science for
women and women for science in the eyes
of the society and last but not the
least the in last invisible bias is the
gender and I will not say just gender
but unequal table workplace non
inclusive workplace and here I don't
talk only about sexual harassment I talk
about all kinds of gender harassment
and these are the different invisible
biases that a woman in science has to
fight and many of these are specific to
women ins so what's the cure the cure is
of course policies the and I have
already talked about some changes in the
mindset and some societal conventions so
let me tell you that I'm really really
proud that in India we had some of the
first enablers that were introduced by
the government the Department of Science
and Technology and well biotechnology
and they were the measures to get allow
women to come back after a break and it
has been flawed as it is that system has
been reasonably successful in ten years
the share of women in projects of
Department of Science and Technology
went and from 15 percent to 25 percent
so it works but now the plate is what
you really want is not to take a break
and come back again because science does
not wait obviously this policy was
framed by not a web by a woman the point
is you need to involve women in such
policy decisions and what would be a
ideal policy decision that can you
minimize the break you know career when
you are going through this initial speed
breakers almost all the contributors of
Leela with his daughter said just help
us getting a level playing field field
in these few years and after that we
don't need any other extra you know
concessions so this is something and
also another point is that one has to
realize and make these policies as
gender neutral as possible because
bearing the child only a woman can do
but raring anybody everybody can do in
fact I have seen my own you know closer
to whom my own nephew arranging his
flexible schedule because he had a flexi
time job so that his wife engineering
wife engineer wife can go back to work
sooner after the Youngman was born where
he can take care of it there is a creche
in I said there and again he used to
keep his child in that I sir asked
creche and have seen there many men
coming and keeping their children so
precious are not
Krisha suffer everybody so every
miniature that you introduce the more
you make gender gender neutral the more
chance you have of it being successful
to arrive further so this is about the
enables yeah about the creche I wanted
to tell you one more story just
yesterday last week I was in a
conference and the award-winning
entrepreneur dr. Kara dish very actually
said one of the big reasons that she
thanked was a crash in Tata Institute
when she was there a postdoctoral fellow
not a faculty so these are small small
things that the Institute can do but it
pays big big dividends okay
I should also yeah I think so that is
the point that I wanted to make so now
you ask a question next is that what you
know what are the other is there are
there any other points that we need to
figure out when we are making these
policies or when we are trying to change
the mindset and there I want to give an
example and this example is that of a
invisible bias how an invisible bias
feeds into a visible challenge and this
is based on a particular survey I admit
which said the loss of trained
scientific human power
what fraction are we losing and why at
this time when we asked the women the
who had actually fallen off the cliff as
to why did they jump off the cliff they
told us yes family was one reason but
other equally important reason was the
unsupportive and rather inflexible
attitudes by scientists by institutions
and by individual and for their social
structures so this gives you clear way
what institutions need to do
institutions need to be welcoming to
women who are trying to come back to
career institutions need to look at the
hiring policies more carefully and see
that there is no bias institutions need
to see where how they can create a more
inclusive atmosphere these are the
things that I institutes can do and
there are the similar things that
scientists like me can
and remember and do well to remember
that and are there any blueprints of
such programs which are run at the
institutional level one such program is
the Athena Swan scientific Women's
Network academic network which is
running in Great Britain and I find it's
a wonderful wonderful initiative it
actually ranks the institution's based
on how good inclusive atmosphere do they
produce at the institutions and you know
science administrators always want to
get high ranking as a result of which
many institutions have put in really a
lot of efforts and they proudly Imperial
College goes around saying we are gold
star Athena Swan it works it helps the
women so I think we have to think of
doing something by way of an Indian
version so the end what do we love the
path to go to a situation we will just
speak of scientists or engineers and not
their gender surprisingly goes to the
path of being very aware of the same for
a long time and that's the path we have
to traverse all of us individual society
and the government's need to work
towards this thank you very much
[Applause]