GENDER ISSUES

The Indian situation

R. RAMACHANDRAN

A.M. FARUQUI

In the science laboratory in the Government Higher Secondary School at Eintkhedi village near Bhopal. In India the dropout rate of girls is the highest when they move from the primary to the secondary level.

AN October 2004 report of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), "Science Career for Indian Women", helps to gain a perspective of the Indian situation. The report was prepared by a special committee constituted by INSA. An important input in it was a study on the behavioural and sociological factors influencing the participation of Indian women in science by SNDT Women's University, Mumbai.

An important aspect of the Indian situation is that the major leak in the pipeline is at the secondary school level, whereas in the West the leaks are at all levels. The dropout rate is higher as girls move from the primary to the secondary school level. But the proportion of women at the higher secondary school level compares well with that at the college/university level. Against 39.8 per cent enrolment at the secondary school stage, enrolment at the college level is 39.4 per cent. This suggests that the numbers entering the university will increase significantly if the leakage at the school level can be plugged. This would, in turn, increase the fraction entering the sciences.

Even at present, in contrast to the situation one obtains in the West, the attrition from graduation to post-graduation in the sciences is not very significant. As per 2001 data, there is, in fact, a marginal increase from 39 per cent to 42.5 per cent. Interestingly, even at the Ph.D level, there is only a marginal drop (to 37.2 per cent). The differing trend in the Indian situation could also be a reflection of the gender-specific socio-economic factors. More men may be opting for job-oriented disciplines after graduation such as management, computer science and engineering. Women may persist for lack of other options. There is also the prevalent perception of higher education in the sciences as having better marriage prospects.

In the context of the current controversy caused by Lawrence Summers, the observation by the INSA report that the selection of subjects for higher studies by Indian girls more by social factors than by any inadequacy with regard to learning maths or physical sciences is relevant. That is, in the Indian context, science, especially applied sciences and engineering, is `socially' rather than `naturally' or `psychologically' unsuitable for most women. The Western situation, where there are ingrained feelings about girls being unsuitable to pursue maths, physical sciences or engineering, is different.

As regards careers in science, the INSA report shows that the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) are the best employers of women, both at scientific and technical levels, with 23.1 and 20.1 per cent of the employees being women. The fraction in all other organisations is less than 15 per cent, even as the fractions in the sciences and medicine are much better (37 and 39.8 per cent respectively).

This is also consistent with the observation (which seems to be globally valid, in fact) that there is a general preference among women for biological sciences, including medicine. (Interestingly, however, in the Indian context, the fractions of women's enrolment at the university level in the fields of agriculture (14.3 per cent), veterinary science (18 per cent) and engineering and technology (16 per cent) are small.) The above data suggest that the proverbial `glass ceiling' affecting the opportunities for academic advancement for women exists in the Indian context.

Several other indicators of the `glass ceiling' effect are in evidence. A leading biological sciences institute, in which 30 per cent of faculty members were women, did not have a single woman on its advisory committees. A study by Vineeta Bal of the National Institute of Immunology (NII), New Delhi, finds that 85.7 per cent of the papers from India in 38 high-impact journals in biological sciences had men as the corresponding/senior authors and only 14.3 had women, despite the higher representation of women in these fields.

This is clear evidence of a bias even among practising scientists, and not just employers. Such biases tend to affect career advancement as scientists' visibility and recognition by peers rule such things as promotions and tenure faculty positions, research grants and research scholarships, travel fellowships, academy fellowships, awards, patents, invitations for presentations at conferences, and inclusion in policy-level and other advisory committees.

In the case of the most prestigious national award in the sciences, the Bhatnagar Prize, out of the 333 awards given between 1958 and 1998, women were selected only eight times. The maximum recognition for women came in the area of medicine (7.6 per cent), whereas no woman has won the award in physics, earth science and engineering. Indeed, in the last five years, no woman was selected in any of the fields. Of the 23 National Biosciences Awards given by the DBT, only two have gone to women.

According to the INSA report, the representation of women on the advisory committees of most institutions is less than 15 per cent. Only about 4 per cent of the fellows in the three major science academies of the country are women. Even in INSA's Sectional Committees, including biological sciences where women are present in significant numbers, women rarely find a place. Of the 502 awards and medals given by INSA, only 14 have gone to women. No woman has become INSA president and out of 41 office-bearers of the academy, in the recent past, only one was a woman.

In sum, the report points out that in the Indian context, retention within the career is a bigger problem compared to access. Rohini Godbole, a theoretical physicist at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, says that despite her very good credentials - having done a masters from an Indian Institute of Technology, a Ph.D from a U.S. university and post-doctoral work at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) - when it came to securing a job, a senior (male) colleague is given preference and that her best bet was to get a teaching job in a women's undergraduate college in a non-urban area.

While there is no gender bias at the level of officially stated hiring policies and recruiting norms and procedures, the discrimination is more indirect and subtle. That is, in the Indian context, there is no need to invoke something like Title IX in the U.S. As the report has observed, male-centric decision-making bodies in science have often worked against women and science and technology has hurt, rather than helped, women.

What is needed are measures to bring about changes that are more perceptive to the special problems of women, in societal mindsets that reflect a gender bias and prejudice at the institutional and organisational levels. Problems of displacement and relocation caused by familial constraints, double-career families, and gaps in work output due to child-bearing and rearing need to be taken into account in the performance evaluation and career graph of women scientists. There is no evidence of any gender differentiation in the intrinsic abilities of women to pursue a career in the sciences.

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