The Indian Academy of Sciences founded by physicist and Nobel Laureate C.V. Raman in Bangalore in 1934 has never had a woman scientist at the helm. The academy’s statistics suggest women make up around 14% of India’s working scientists; only 15% of faculty members in various research institutes across the country are women.
The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science & Technology given annually by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research for notable research in biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, mathematics, medicine and environmental science, has been awarded to 571 scientists between 1958 and 2023. In the last 65 years, only 20 women scientists have received India’s most prestigious science award — for the first time in 1961 and the last in 2020.
Prevalent biases
There are explicit and implicit biases against women in science. People think men are more suited to the subject and women are innately not interested. The Matilda effect shows the exodus of women from science as they remain under-appreciated for their achievements while suffering discrimination in perks, promotions and opportunities.
Science cannot be a monolith of men and their research alone. Yet women have to fight psychological pressures and systemic challenges in their scientific journey. British chemist Rosalind Franklin who contributed to the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1951 and astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell who discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967 went unrecognised during their careers. Rajinder Jeet Hans-Gill wore a turban and a boy’s uniform in the mid-1950s to be allowed to study mathematics in a school in Punjab; biochemist Kamala Sohonie sat on a satyagraha so that IISc, Bangalore, would open its doors for women. Patriarchal oppression triggers a mindset that works against women but can a history of science be written based on a history of exclusion of women in science?
To examine the state of women scientists in India, Aashima Dogra and Nandita Jayaraj journeyed across science laboratories from Bhopal to Bhubaneswar and Bengaluru to Jammu in 2016. They engaged in thought-provoking interviews with young researchers and renowned scientists including Gagandeep Kang, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Rohini Godbole, Prajval Shastri Majumdar to explore why gender inequality haunts Indian science.
The outcome is a riveting book, Lab Hopping: Women Scientists in India, which provides a fresh perspective on breaking stereotypes, apathy and sexism. The authors make no bones about the mediocrity in Indian science due to the shameful lack of diversity. They say societal expectations of family and childcare from a woman makes science a matter of gender, compelling every woman scientist to constantly perform her gender at the cost of due recognition.
Giving due credit
The road map for the way out of this is to celebrate women scientists. The fact that the ISRO team of ‘rocket women’ who played a pivotal role in Chandrayan-II and III Moon missions were applauded would have inspired many budding scientists. There are publications that have documented the path breaking work of women scientists, and more needs to be done on this front.
Vigyan Prasar, an autonomous body under the Department of Science & Technology, has compiled a resource book profiling Indian women scientists with a timeline of their accomplishments from pre-Independence to present times. The unconventional paths these intrepid women pioneers tread is an eye-opener.
Another anthology of 100 women scientists, Lilavati’s Daughters: The Women Scientists of India, edited by Ram Ramaswamy and Rohini Godbole, highlights the struggles and triumphs of women scientists and their under-representation — only a fraction of women pursue a PhD degree and even fewer become scientists. A renowned mathematician of the 12th century, Bhaskaracharya, made his brilliant daughter Lilavati solve problems in algebra, geometry and mathematics. Every woman scientist featured in the book is considered the inheritor of Lilavati’s intellectual legacy and is a role model, say the authors. Anjana Chattopadhyay’s Women Scientists in India: Lives, Struggles and Achievements exposes the neglect of women’s contribution to science and how it impeded their careers even as they fought opposition in their homes, study and workplaces.
Gutsy Girls of Science by Ilina Singh celebrates the lives of cytogeneticist Archana Sharma, botanist E.K. Janaki Ammal, mathematician Raman Parimala, physicist Bibha Chowdhuri, chemist Asima Chatterjee and six other trailblazing women who fulfilled their scientific ambitions against all odds. The anecdotal narrative should encourage girls to carve out a successful career in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics).
The life of Janaki Ammal
A 2020 Malayalam book took Nirmala James to various places associated with the firebrand E.K. Janaki Ammal, the first Indian woman to be awarded a PhD in botanical science in 1931. In Janaki Ammal: Life and Scientific Contributions, James brings to light interesting insights about Janaki’s extraordinary life, gleaned from her father’s diary.
Savithri Preetha Nair got interested when she came across Janaki Ammal’s name in the 1932 list of members of the Eugenics Society, London. Her’s was the only Indian name till anthropologist L.K. Ananthakrishna Iyer made it to the list 35 years later. In Chromosome Woman, Nomad Scientist, a Life – 1897 to 1984, Nair offers an archive-based expansive and analytical biography of the scientist and her research of sugarcane and hybrids, while facing sexism, casteism and racism. Nair says Janaki Ammal chose a nomadic path to shake off patriarchal shackles. Whenever she felt she could not operate within the regimented system dictated by rigid objectives set by males, she went off on excursions, visited sanctuaries and forests to do her research in solitude.
In A Braided River: The Universe of Indian Women in Science by Christopher Coley, Christie Gressel and Abhijit Dhillon, the writers explore how lack of diversity and the gender gap weaken science and its contribution to national development. Over the years, India has implemented initiatives to encourage girls and women in science, but the complex issue of assisting Indian women in their scientific careers persists with numerous visible and invisible barriers.
