Bridging the Gender Gap in Science and Technology
Recently, the Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani had announced that 11 women scientists would be honoured with national chairs (professorships) named after “historical women scientists”.
Causes of gender gap in science and technology in India
- Discriminatory familial responsibilities weigh women down: It is still often assumed that women are the primary caregivers and liable to compromise their professional responsibilities.
- It is still considered okay to judge the parental or life-partner status of a woman scientist while deciding to hire her or give her a leadership position, overlooking her merit.
- Under-representation of women in the field of science: There is extensive evidence of gender differences in academia suggesting that women are underrepresented in most scientific disciplines and publish fewer articles throughout a career.
- Lack of payment equality among men and women: It is also a well-known fact that women in science and technology are paid less for their work and often experience huge difficulties to advance their careers.
- Disparity differs across academic disciplines: The women scientists tended to occupy lower rungs of the institutional hierarchy.
- A drop in the selected women-fraction compared to that of the pool is a hallmark of the discrimination in the process.
Importance of women in the field of science and technology
- Growth of GDP: It is estimated that narrowing the gender gap could add between $12 and $28 trillion to the global gross domestic product (GDP).
- Achieving SDGs require women participation: The women and girls must be given equal opportunities to design and develop many of the solutions needed to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement.
- A bigger boost to growth: The productivity and growth gains from adding women to the labor force are larger because women bring new skills to the workplace.
- Higher productivity: When interpreting past data in situations where the gender gap has been narrowing over time, the contribution to growth from improved efficiency (or total factor productivity gains) is overstated.
- Higher male incomes: There are results which suggest that men’s wages will also increase as a result of greater inclusion of women in the labor force since productivity will increase.
- A bigger payoff to reducing gender barriers along development paths: The rise of the services sector driven by economic development brings more women into the labor force.
Challenges in closing gender gap in science and technology
- Lack of enrolment of women in PhD programme: The women constitute nearly 50 per cent of science PhDs employed in Indian higher education, but granular statistics, from physics, engineering and the industrial workforce show a large gender gap that widens further at the higher echelons.
- Higher gender gap at prestigious positions: About 680 faculty span mostly engineering and science, of which nearly 60 hold prestigious “chairs” but only 14 per cent of the faculty and 9 per cent of the chairs are women, even as 25 per cent of the chairs remain unfilled.
- Underrepresentation may lead to displacement: The under-representation of women in STEM puts women as a group at the high risk of being displaced by technology as India is likely to overtake the US as the world’s largest developer population centre by 2024.
- Social Conditioning: It is the most acute problem throughout one’s childhood and adolescence.
- The dangerous spin-off brought about by social conditioning of children is when they develop cognitive biases as adults.
- Caregiver: Women are often considered as caregivers for the family and there is more emphasis on time-off policies for new mothers and not concerned on academic and research contribution of women.
- Stigmas towards women still exist: The gender bias and discrimination is prevalent in different areas, including publishing in peer reviewed journals.
- There is a deeply chauvinistic society where men are in positions of leadership and women are not allowed for a position of leadership.
Initiatives taken by government to promote women in science
- Vigyan Jyoti: It is an initiative that will create a level-playing field for the meritorious girls in high school to pursue Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) in their higher education.
- Gender Advancement for Transforming Institutions (GATI): It will develop a comprehensive Charter and a framework for assessing the Gender Equality in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
- An online portal for science and technology resources for women will provide E-resources related to all women-specific government schemes, scholarships, fellowships, career counseling with details of subject area experts from various disciplines in science and technology.
- Women Scientist Scheme (WOS): It is aimed at providing opportunities to women scientists and technologists who desire to return to mainstream science after a break in career due to social responsibilities.
- Knowledge Involvement in Research Advancement through Nurturing (KIRAN): It was launched in 2014 to bring gender parity in Science &Technology through gender mainstreaming.
- Women technology parks (WTPs): It act as a single window hub for convergence of diversified technologies, leading to socio-economic development of women through capacity building and adoption of location-specific technologies.
- INDO-US Fellowship for Women in STEMM (WISTEMM): It aims to provide opportunities to Indian women scientists, engineers and technologists to undertake international collaborative research in premier institutions in USA to enhance their research capacities and capabilities.
Measures to be adopted to close gender parity in science and technology
- Gender Sensitization: It is necessary to stop women-only training workshops to “fix the women” and instead gender-sensitise all faculty and management because all of us, regardless of gender, are raised to accept sexist thought and action.
- Address cultural impediments: Some cultures perpetuate stereotypes about who belongs in tech and who does not.
- It is necessary to counter culture with culture as we must elevate female role models (especially girls and women of colour) in pop culture, business and everyday life.
- Encouraging girls to be brave: Programming is all about risk-taking, tinkering and trying new things and it is about trial and error and the acceptance of setbacks.
- Dedicated commitments and investments: It is required from the private sector, philanthropies and governments which will help girls overcome the many obstacles they face in primary school and college.
- Availability and implementation of specific policies: The strategies in wider policies for the promotion of (female) participation in STEM-related TVET aim at a systemic response by simultaneously targeting different parts of the system.
- Collection and analysis of data: There is a need to develop indicators at a global level that can better capture changing patterns of participation and performance of girls and women in STEM-related subjects.
Road ahead
- The parents should take care to remind their children that they can grow up to do anything that they want, while providing a wide range of opportunities for children to explore their interests.
- The scholarships and grants can help to bring women into STEM departments.
- It is critical for employers to identify and address discrimination in their hiring practices so they can produce a diverse workplace to promote greater happiness and productivity among their employees.
- The DST plans to run intensive gender sensitisation programmes, especially for the top leadership of institutions, and work within existing rules such as pushing for women members on selection committees during recruitment processes.
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