Editorial 1. Scientific progress More women are making a career in science. A lot more needs to be done to ease their journeys
Recent context : Recently, Department of Science and Technology (DST) released the data , according to that there is rise in the participation of women in scientific and technological fields over the last two decade.
Major findings of the Data:
- While the social sciences and humanities still register a larger presence of women researchers, numbers have increased appreciably in the sciences as well
- The percentage of women researchers has increased from 13.9 in 2015 to 18.7 in 2018.
- Health sciences is now pegged at 24.5 per cent, natural sciences and agriculture at 22.5 per cent and engineering and technology at 14.5 per cent.
- Women hold research and leadership positions in institutions such as the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Defence Research & Development Organisation and Indian Space Research Organisation, among others
What is STEM
- STEM is a common abbreviation for four closely connected areas of study: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The fields are often associated due to the similarities they share both in theory and practice. Till now, the representation of women in these fields has been much less compared to men. There is global voice to enhance the participation of women for better outcome.
India’s position with major countries and area of concern:
According to All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2019 (by Ministry of Education) ,
- percentage-wise there are more Indian female (43%) graduates in STEM at tertiary level than developed nations like the US (34%), UK (38%), Germany (27%) and France (32%). however, it lagged behind men (56%).
- However, despite being higher percentage of women participation in STEM, women’s participation in STEM-related jobs in the country currently around 14 %
- According to the 2018 Global Gender Gap report, India is ranked 108 out of 149 countries.
- The 2019 All India Survey on Higher Education shows a significant lag in female participation at doctoral levels, partly owing to the pressures of marriage and family planning.
Reasons for low participation of Women in STEM?
- Gender Stereotypes: STEM fields are often viewed as masculine, and teachers and parents often underestimate girls’ math abilities starting as early as preschool.
- The patriarchal attitudes in awarding grants, fellowships and hiring practices as well as pressures to conform to societal norms, household responsibilities and stress related to marriage and childbirth also play a major role in women backing out of advanced careers in science and technology.
- Fewer Role Models: girls have fewer role models to inspire their interest in these fields, seeing limited examples of female scientists and engineers in books, media and popular culture. Only 17 women have won a Nobel Prize in physics, chemistry, or medicine since Marie Curie in 1903, compared to 572 men till 2017 while only 28% of all of the world’s researchers are women.
- Underrepresentation in STEM Workforce: there are lesser opportunity for female compare to man in STEM based job which discourage women to choose STEM as a career option.
- Lack of effective encouraging policies and their implementation by government for the Women in STEM field.
Steps need to be taken to increase participation of women in STEM:
- Encouraging the girls and women by skills development and confidence building to choose the STEM.
- By providing equitable educational opportunity and encouraging them by great women personalities such as Madam curie.
- Promote public awareness to parents about how they can encourage daughters as much as sons in math and science and supporting learning opportunities and positive messages about their abilities.
- Need to attract, recruit and retain women into STEM fields in colleges and universities.
- Design courses and change environments and practices in STEM studies to be more welcoming for women.
- Prioritize diverse, inclusive and respectful environments, and strong, diverse leadership and intentionally inclusive cultures.
- Improve job hiring, retention and promotion pathways and intentionally inclusive cultures:
- Recruit more women and work to retain and promote women throughout their careers with strong professional development and leadership training.
- Promote welcoming work environments, including providing pay equity; flexibility; strong family and medical leave policies and strong anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies.
- Government needs to frame women specific policies in STEM for their better participation in STEM.
Initiatives taken by government to encourage women participation:
- Gender Advancement for Transforming Institutions (GATI) scheme:
- To support the development of a gender-equitable ecosystem within higher education and research institutions,
- Under this, institutions will commit to adopting gender-sensitive policies and practices for women in STEM courses.
- Consolidation of University Research for Innovation and Excellence (CURIE) initiative, It provides support to women universities in improving their Research & Development (R&D) facilities. So far, eight women universities have successfully received support under CURIE, with Artificial Intelligence labs established in six of them.
- “SERB-POWER (Promoting Opportunities for Women in Exploratory Research)”:
- Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), a Statutory body of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India has launched it to mitigate gender disparity in science and engineering research funding in various S&T programs in Indian academic institutions and research and development (R&D) laboratories
- It addresses comparatively lower participation of women scientists in research activities and to identify and support competitive women researchers in the country
- As India has only 16.6% women researchers directly engaged in R&D activities.
- “Knowledge Involvement in Research Advancement through Nurturing (KIRAN)” Scheme of DST: ‘
- Women Scientist Scheme (WOS)’ under KIRAN provides career opportunities including fellowships to unemployed women scientists and technologists, especially those who had a break in career, for pursuing research in frontier areas of science and engineering
- Women Entrepreneur’s Quest (WEQ) Programme was initiated by DST in partnership with Anita Borg Institute, USA for scouting and supporting Women Entrepreneurs in Technology. A total of 42 start-ups have been supported so far and 21 start-ups have grown to next level
- ‘Indo-US Fellowship for Women in STEM’ (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine) : It was launched to provide opportunities to Indian women scientists, engineers and technologists to undertake international collaborative research in premier institutions in the US for 3-6 months,”
Conclusion / Way forward:
- There is need for two ways approach to encourage the participation of women in STEM i.e. Short term: framing the policies, designing the course and providing employment opportunities to encourage women in STEM fields, Long term measures includes removing the manifested stereotype and patriarchal mindset from the society which discourage their active participation.
- However, With the increasing use of AI in the sciences, there is expected exponential growth in women’s participation in S&T — with women using more sophisticated tools that allow remote working, such as something simple like access to online libraries. Even chemical sciences and the industry is getting smarter and cleaner, and expected that the number of women employed will now increase.