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Being a woman is no obstacle in science if you are determined and have the will to succeed

 I came across this quote when I was in school. Since then I wanted to be like an eagle - reaching the heights no adversity can touch. It made me go above the clouds whenever it rained. Now I welcome the rain and more challenges in my life!

Recently I read an article in SA. You too can read it here:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/07/12/women-in-...

It says being a woman is really an obstacle in science.

"Wait a minute", I thought after reading the article, "This attitude of women should change." And I am going to help them change it.  

So I gave this reply to the author:

Yes, to some extent what you said is true in some parts of India and the developing world. But I never ever faced any discrimination just because I am a girl/woman. Nor did I suffer more than any man while pursuing my career in science in India.
In fact I feel this discrimination and suffering you talk about should make us more determined and strong. Don’t complain. Smash those glass ceilings and boulders in your way and let me see who dares to stop you. If you want equality, don’t expect someone else to give it to you or help you in getting it. Grab it with both hands and move forward. Nobody and nothing can come your way if you really have a will to follow your heart.

Agreed the system has loopholes. But women have waited for centuries for the system to get corrected. It might take much more time in the future too because you cannot correct the centuries old system overnight. If we wait for the perfect conditions to launch ourselves, it would take much much longer time for women to progress. So an effort must be made now at individual levels too!

Another one here says how stereotyping makes women scientists' confidence go low:

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/12/156664337/stereotype-threat-why-women...

My reply  : Interesting article. But I never ever felt low before my male colleagues. I always feel confident because I am well informed about not only my subject but also has adequate knowledge about other things ( if you don't have good knowledge in your subject nobody will respect you!). Maybe that gave me real confidence! I was never psychologically effected by stereotypical statements like "women are not as good as men in science subjects". Why  should you feel you are inferior to men when you are not just because somebody says you are?  Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent!

How much truth is there in the above articles and statements? Here is a confident reply from a woman scientist with whom I fully agree:

Being a woman made it even more challenging, given the social norms, but the support of my parents, close family and teachers was overwhelming. It made me what I am today. I chose Nuclear Physics against electronics and solid state physics at BHU simply due to the “outstanding” set of teachers. I always admired women who worked through adversities and did pioneering work. In addition, my mother is the epitome, of diligence! My father had an amazing confidence in my abilities;
My dreams lay more on the basis of being able to do something meaningful and impactful in life than to just earn money. http://www.thehindu.com/arts/magazine/article3639263.ece?homepage=true

Women give several excuses for not moving forward in step with their male colleagues. Let me discuss a few now.

(1) They can't find men who can date them when they go into the fields of science like Physics! ( are they complaining unintentionally that it goes against their femininity to enter the male dominated fields and exhibit their grey matter and therefore have to choose between their femininity and science research/being good at doing several things?).

My view: This is funny. Because when I was doing my PG and  Ph.D. in sciences, I used to run away from men/boys who pursued me constantly because I thought dating men was a hindrance to my work! And that these things were obstacles to my science career! The more I ran away from men, the more they followed me! Who says beauty (of feminine fame) and brains can't go together? It seems if a woman thinks that a man will always look at her intelligence and her looks as mutually exclusive properties, she will feel much more pressure to pick between the two. Women, you need not feel this pressure! You can have both the things at the same time confusing and driving men mad! And enjoy it too! I don't think this is a genuine excuse!

(2) They have to look after their young children.

My view: When two people are involved in a marriage alliance even the husbands have equal responsibilities in looking after children. Several men do help their wives. I have seen many successful women who can juggle several things at a time! Women are very good at these things! I looked after my old and ailing parents too - which was equally difficult. I set up a mini lab at home  to continue working whenever I have to stay at home because of my responsibilities! If women think they can't do both things of  bringing children up and scientific research at the same time,  they can take some time off, take part time work, work from home or go back to work again after a few  years (keeping in touch with their  subject constantly during this off -period is important so that they don't lose their confidence), when their children have grown up.

Try new things. Take the unbeaten path. Just because everyone else is doing something, doesn’t mean you have to as well. When I couldn't work outside of my home for some time because of my responsibilities, I started communicating science which is as important as  doing research in science.

(3)Women's treatment – both subtle and sometimes blatantly non-subtle – at the hands of their male peers, parents and society at large leads to low self-esteem and lack of self confidence in their ability to succeed in science.

My view: Women, don't let the external factors dictate your life. If you think you have the ability to do a work, just do it and show the world what you are capable of. The world then will have no other go but to accept your talents and intelligence ( please read one of my poems "The power of a strong will" which says this here : http://kkartlab.in/group/theartofwritingpoems/forum/topics/the-powe...

(4) Lack of encouragement from their family members/ male colleagues:

My view: Ladies, haven't you heard about self motivation? If you have the determination, nobody or nothing can stop you!

(5) History tells  how difficult it is for women (1) to win a Nobel prize or any other prestigious award. Highly accomplished women like Gertrude Elion, Emmy Noether and Gerty Cori had to play second fiddle to their less accomplished male counterparts even after publishing groundbreaking research. The example of Jocelyn Bell Burnell is well-known. Bell discovered the first pulsar while working for her advisor, Anthony Hewish. Ideally she should have shared in Hewish’s Nobel Prize but she didn’t. 

My view: I feel before complaining women should think about Marie Curie, Christiane Nusslein-Volhard, Emmy Noether, Lise Meitner, Barbara McClintock, Chien-Shiung Wu, and Rosalind Franklin. These and other remarkable women struggled against gender discrimination, raised families, and became political and religious leaders. They were mountain climbers, musicians, seamstresses, and gourmet cooks. Above all, they were strong, joyful women in love with discovery. Derive inspiration from them, learn lessons from their lives and move forward. Why should we enter the field of science with thoughts that depress us instead of stories that inspire us?

(6) It seems even though women are 'gifted', because of the “slow drumbeat of being underappreciated, feeling uncomfortable and encountering roadblocks along the path to success” ( are we nervous?!) are stopping them from moving forward.

My view: But don't forget that if a woman is 'really gifted with abundant grey matter', she is also gifted with the ability to overcome these obstacles. Make this ability work at full throttle to overcome all the roadblocks, ladies!

(7) Being the only woman in the company of several males  makes them uncomfortable !

My view: My dears, I myself faced this situation several times during my career! I was never nervous or felt I was a woman during these situations! I never felt I was different from men in any way! ( I will tell an interesting story here: Once we went into a forest to collect samples when I was doing my Ph.D. There were eight men and I was the only woman in the group. One of the men teased me and said: "Krishna, what will you do if we come across a Tiger now?" I casually replied, "I will do the same you guys would do". "We will climb trees. Can you climb a tree with this dress of yours? ( Yes, I was wearing a saree then), they all laughed. "Why not?" I said firmly without reacting much to their laughter.  "I bet you cannot, wearing this dress", one of my male colleagues challenged me. " I can and I will", I said firmly. They all started laughing. I immediately kept my bag down, selected a nearby tall tree and to the astonishment of all my male colleagues, climbed up the tree! It wasn't easy, I was then - like I am now- a very delicate person, my hands and legs ached,   blisters formed on them but still to show the men, they cannot take me lightly, I did this. The men were  shocked into silence! They all started taking me seriously since then. And they took pictures of me climbing the tree and showed them to everybody in the university campus, especially my professors and although my professors smiled at them, they scolded me gently too. My colleagues tell me they still have those pictures with them! I am sure they learned the lesson of not taking my words  lightly or doubting my ability to do things again! So?!)

I will again tell one of my other  experiences. We had a conference on toxins in a very dangerous place of North India where we had to travel through a stretch of forest by train where you would frequently come across dangerous bandits. Our group leader was a woman. All my male colleagues refused to go with her because of the danger involved. Then one of my female colleagues and I volunteered to go with her. Our group leader spoke to my parents about the danger involved. Then my father told her he had faith in me to face the dangers and that he had no objection to send me to the conference. That gave me more confidence.
And we traveled to this place called Bhagalpur, a backward place in Bihar, we encountered the bandits on our way, faced them with tact and escaped, presented our papers and returned back safely. Then everybody started praising us - the group of women who bravely had gone to a place where men feared to go to present their science research papers!
Need I say more? This is a different situation but still I feel women have to take these chances to progress through the male dominated field of science.

{One lady said after reading this: The 'blood and sweat' people like you have had to expend to achieve in your field could have been used to even better effect to achieve even more, if we can acknowledge the obstacles that do exist.

And my reply to her: Most of these obstacles have been identified long back. Several Governments around the world took steps  to tackle the problems too like giving monetary assistance to women and girls  to get educated in the science subjects -  sometimes even waiving fee, giving special preferences to women in jobs etc., relaxing age limits for women to enter the field of science and bringing laws to stop women being harassed in male dominated fields.  I have seen all these positive steps  being taken in this part of the world. Problems have been identified and corrective steps have been taken by the States. But it takes time to change the mind set of people. Laws alone cannot change them. We must do our bit too to counter backlash, resentment, and lack of respect and support from male colleagues because of affirmative actions and reservations.

 The 'sweat and blood' aspect is common to both men and women in developing countries at higher levels of education and career. We struggle more here than the people in the developed countries. Are we wasting our time because of this? It isn't a waste of time  as we develop new skills, learn how to do things creatively and efficiently with the limited resources we have {this came to light during studies on different systems (3)}, learn how to conserve things and how to increase our mental strength - especially our resilience and confidence. Like Shakespeare said, 'sweet are the uses of adversity' (only if you are a good learner!). And I have learned how to climb a tree, face bandits without fear and how to tackle them with tact,  how to efficiently use my limited time for various things I do,  above all how to progress efficiently as a woman with all the limitations around me. These lessons are as important in my life as my research in science! Like one of my female colleagues says -  if a woman can work and succeed in a scientific research institute in India,  she can face anything with confidence anywhere in the world! “Life without problems is like a school without classes. You don’t learn your lessons”.}

(8) They are paid less than men for doing the same  work.

My view: Refuse to accept it. Challenge people to show that you are inferior to any man either in intelligence, creativity, ability to do the work, confidence, less skilled or any other thing that is responsible for such discrimination.

 But then I was never discriminated. I was always asked politely to put forward  my expectations of salary and was offered what I deserved and expected in all the fields I work in!

[ This in a region ( South Asia) where, according to recent UN reports (2), women to a greater extent than men – are in vulnerable employment, paid less than men, girls are more likely than boys to perform unpaid work ! According to these reports,  in the less developed regions, many young girls aged 5-14 take on a large amount of household chores, including care-giving, cooking and cleaning, and older girls do so to an even greater extent. Here, girls generally work longer hours than boys. Long hours of work in developing countries to which India belongs, affect children’s ability to participate fully in education. Analysis shows that school attendance declines as the number of hours spent on household chores increases – and declines more steeply for girls than for boys. So, ladies,  don't think the situation here favours women. In fact it is worse than developed countries! ]

So what is the reason for people making me one of the exceptions? It is because....

Whenever I participate in debates/conferences/seminars in any of the fields I am associated with, I try to be in the forefront, see that my voice will be heard and noticed by everybody, say things with confidence using reasoning and the right logic,  make use of all my talents, and show people why they are wrong when they oppose me. This really made people respect me. So usually nobody dares to sideline me or ignore me. In fact people -  including men   - come to  me for guidance and support! And when some men told me I was their inspiration, I was pleasantly surprised!

I am an introvert but knowledge in several fields gave me strength and the ability to move forward without any hindrance. It gave me the thrust and I am as good as any extrovert in putting my views across even in the presence of all experts. I am not worried about anything or anyone now.  Knowledge has great power. So women get armed with it if you want to succeed in  male dominated fields.

To show the world, especially men, my capabilities I entered all  the three fields which are treated as  'reserved for intellectuals' - science, art and literature. I was trained only in science and developed skills in several other fields on my own. I became a polymath and display all my capabilities along with my name so that men can never belittle me - even if they do it they do it out of jealousy and not because of lack of abilities on my part! And you should feel proud if you can make any man jealous!

Once a person called me Lady Da Vinci. I told him not to call me a Da Vinci because although he was a legend (and I am not) - he was not known for his literary capabilities. Call me Krishna Kumari, with my own name. Let the world recognize and associate the name with female mind power!

Most of these 'obstacles' women say they face appear more daunting  because of insecurity, nervousness, lack of confidence,  self assurance and determination. So one must make an effort to tackle them first. Then you don't feel these road blocks at all!

To become successful in science for that matter in any field, you need perfect confidence, will to succeed, tight grip over your subject (this is a must!), awareness of the latest things happening in the field, creative capability to connect things, belief in your abilities and a little bit of support from your parents and teachers - if you don't get outside support, self -assurance works best. And, magic, magic, magic, magic, you will be on the top of the world. Gender has no other go but to become irrelevant!

  1. Don't speak…
  2. Just do it…
  3. Reach on the apex..
  4. So, revenge will have been done.

The only bird that dares to peck an eagle with its beak is the crow.
She sits down on the eagle's back and pecks him in the neck.
The eagle does not react or fight with the crow. He doesn't waste time or energy on the crow.
Instead, he simply opens his wings and begins to soar higher into the sky. The higher he flies, the harder it is for the crow to breathe and eventually the crow just falls down because it lacks oxygen.
Learn from the eagle and don't fight the crows, just keep climbing higher.
They may still be sitting on you, but they will soon fall down.
Don't get distracted.
Concentrate on the things above you and keep climbing up.

The Lesson of the Eagle and the Crow, Solara

References:

1. http://www.amazon.com/Nobel-Prize-Women-Science-Discoveries/dp/0309...

2. http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/Worldswomen/WW_full...

3. http://www.ted.com/talks/navi_radjou_creative_problem_solving_in_th...

Views: 4739

Replies to This Discussion

Maryam Al-Ijliya
She lived in the tenth century in Aleppo, Syria and was a famous scientist who designed and constructed astrolabes. Astrolabes were global positioning instruments that determine the position of the sun and planets, so they were used in the fields of astronomy, astrology and horoscopes.Her hand-crafted designs were so intricate and innovative that she was employed by the ruler of the city, Sayf Al Dawla, from 944 AD until 967 AD. She will always be remembered in history for her genius designs.
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Irène Curie-Joliot (1897 – 1956)



​The elder daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie, Irène followed her parents to become a scientist. The thesis for her 1925 doctor of science was on the alpha rays of polonium, one of the two elements her mother discovered. The next year, she married Frédéric Joliot, one of her mother’s assistants at the Radium Institute in Paris. Irène and Frédéric continued their collaboration inside the laboratory, pursuing research on the structure of the atom.

In 1934, they discovered artificial radioactivity by bombarding aluminum, boron and magnesium with alpha particles to produce isotopes of nitrogen, phosphorus, silicon and aluminum. They received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1935, making the first duo family duo to win Nobel Prize, other being J.J Thomson and his son, George Thomson. All those years working with radioactivity had a problem on her just like her mother and Irène died of leukemia in 1956.
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Nettie Stevens

She is the one responsible for the discovery of X and Y chromosome in sex determination. But the credit is given to Edmund Wilson and Thomas H Morgan. They even won the Nobel Prize for Nettie's hardwork.

http://www.geneticstv.org/scient...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nettie_Stevens
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Certainly not easily forgotten for her beauty, Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr scientific accomplishments were largely uncelebrated.

From her Wikipedia bio:

Lamarr's and Antheil's frequency-hopping idea served as a basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology, such as Bluetooth, COFDM (used in Wi-Fi network connections), and CDMA (used in some cordless and wireless telephones). Blackwell, Martin, and Vernam's 1920 patent seems to lay the communications groundwork for Lamarr and Antheil's patent, which employed the techniques in the autonomous control of torpedoes. Lamarr wanted to join the National Inventors Council, but was reportedly told by NIC member Charles F. Kettering and others that she could better help the war effort by using her celebrity status to sell War Bonds.
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One of the technologies behind the cellphones we use today is attributed to one of the most beautiful women ever lived:
Hedy Lamarr.
She was an Austrian born American actress, who alongwith her neighbour contrived up the idea of Frequency Hopping.
This is the basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology, such as Bluetooth, COFDM (used in Wi-Fi network connections), and CDMA (used in some cordless and wireless telephones), where the data transfer is safe because the frequency with which it is transmitted hops frequently, which is predecided and the algorithm is known only to the encoder and the decoder.
George Antheil, her neighbour was on to controlling the automation of musical instruments, like the piano. The piano role often changed unpredictably, which sparked the idea in their heads about changing the frequencies of communication likewise. That'd decript the data very efficiently. They patented this idea in 1942.
But this idea was not practically adopted untill 1962, owing to the lack of advanced electronics. Her work, however, was honoured in '97 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
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People have heard of Masters and Johnson. They were the first researchers who used the scientific method to study human sexuality. They studied sexuality in all it's forms and cataloged it. Some people are surprised to know that the Johnson in Masters and Johnson was a woman

Virginia E Johnson was hired by William H Masters as a research assistant. She went on to invent a lot of the equipment that they used to study human sexuality. A lot of what we know about sex, we owe it to both of them

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Science is sexy and so are we. Giving science an extreme makeover. The beautiful black women of #STEM.
https://divabiotech.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/science-is-sexy-and-so...
http://www.businessinsider.in/The-Sexiest-Scientists-Alive/articles...

Margaret Hamilton
Computer Scientist

She was the lead of Software Design team of the Apollo program.

Hamilton's team's work prevented an abort of the Apollo 11 moon landing

Hedy Lamar- engineer and actress. Developed some cryptography stuff about switching frequencies that the military could even figure out until years later.

Mary Tsingou- Programmer and mathematician from the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam experiments. Worked on explosion models in Los alamos. Possibly made first computer graphics as well.

Sandra Faber - dark matter pioneer recently awarded presidential medal of science by President Obama.

There is actually a lot of women who have made significant contributions to science and engineering, it's just they don't get that much credit because of society's flaws. Here's a short list of some of them:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
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I can't resist to print a nice story about Emmy Noether:
In the spring of 1915, Noether was invited to return to the University of Göttingen by David Hilbert and Felix Klein. Their effort to recruit her, however, was blocked by the philologistsand historians among the philosophical faculty: women, they insisted, should not becomeprivatdozent. One faculty member protested: "What will our soldiers think when they return to the university and find that they are required to learn at the feet of a woman?" Hilbert responded with indignation, stating, "I do not see that the sex of the candidate is an argument against her admission as privatdozent. After all, we are a university, not a bath house for men."
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Dr Alice Roberts is someone who comes to mind. Her documentary "The incredible Human journey" is a fascinating piece of work that I am sure will inspire most of the girls in your class. Best part is she is someone who comes across as very passionate and learned about the science and is inspiring even to older people like me !
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Beatrice Sweeney, an incredibly gifted manipulator of living cells.

Most people who should, by their job description, know about her work have not heard of her. They keep going down implausible ratholes trying to find "clock genes" or otherwise prove that cellular clocks are driven by negative (!) feedbacks in gene networks.

By enucleating Acetabularia cells, Beatrice Sweeney demonstrated that the source of endogenous rhythmicity must be in the cytoplasm. That theoricidal observation of hers (one of several, equally phenomenal observations) has been ignored for more than half-a-century by mainstream chronobiology.
--

Lillian Moller Gilbreth - more in the field of Engineering & Management rather than science, but still worth a mention.

“The first woman engineer” and “the mother of modern management” are just some of the accolades that she has earned.

The number of innovations that she brought about is truly stunning. She was a pioneer in the study of fatigue at the work-spot, a fore-runner to today’s ergonomics. The electric food mixer, shelves in refrigerator doors and the dustbin which can be opened with a foot-pedal are all her inventions. Her husband and she are among the first to realize the importance of the human element in the work spot and did a lot of work on the role of the psychology of the individual at the workplace. They spoke about the adverse effect of stress and lack of sleep on the productivity of the individual.

In private life, she married Frank Gilbreth and had a family of twelve children, six boys and six girls. Within their family life, they implemented most of the principles that they had pioneered for work -places. A truly funny description of their family life is given in the books “Cheaper by the dozen” and “Belles on their toes”, which are written by their children.

The California Quarterly dubbed her a “genius in the art of living”, which is probably the finest title that anyone can aspire for.

This is one lady who should be a role-model for all women - scientists, engineers, managers, whatever.
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Lise Meitner

An Austrian physicist who worked on radioactivity and nuclear physics.
Meitner was part of the team that discovered nuclear fission, an achievement for which her colleague Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize..

It was the most glaring experience where a woman's scientific achievements was over-looked by the Nobel committee.

The aforementioned incident was given in the book by David Bodanis-

E=mc~2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation: David Bodanis: 9780425181645: Amazon.com: Books also

and their was a documentary made with the same name..


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_scientists_before_the_...
http://www.astr.ua.edu/4000WS/
http://www.astr.ua.edu/4000WS/didyouknow.8.html

Why boys do better in science exam than girls explained
WASHINGTON: Male students may perform better than females in life science exams not because they have better academic ability, but due to the way the questions are designed, according to a new research.
The study also found that high socio-economic status students perform better than lower-status students on the same tests.
Researchers from Arizona State University (ASU) in the US found that females and males do equally well on exams that require mostly memorization. The same holds true for low- and high-socio-economic status students.
However, when tests include cognitively challenging questions that require elevated critical thinking, females and lower socio-economic students score lower than their male or high-status peers, even though the students have equal academic ability, researchers said.
Over a three-year period, researchers looked at 87 undergraduate introductory biology exams taught by 26 instructors at a public research university. They included over 4,800 students in the analysis.
"At first glance, one might assume the differences in exam performance are based on academic ability. However, we controlled for this in our study by including the students' incoming grade point averages in our analysis," said Christian Wright from ASU.
"We were surprised to find that this gap emerged based on cognitive challenge level, and that this negatively affected women and lower socioeconomic students," said Wright.
Researchers recommend using active learning practices to help close the gap, including clickers, classroom discussion and other tools known to enhance student learning and help students perform better on critical thinking questions.
According to Wright, psychological factors such as stereotype threat, which can impact cognitive load, or students having growth or fixed mindsets may be the reason why a gap emerges when they take more challenging exams that test critical thinking.
The findings were published in the journal CBE-Life Sciences Education.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/Why-boys-do-better-...

  1. Don't speak…
  2. Just do it…
  3. Reach on the apex..
  4. So, revenge will have been done.

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