Women's Day: Gender gap in Science awaits closure

Scientists feel the lack of female role models in STEM at school and in the workplace feeds disparities

A pandemic-hit world, in the past year, reaped the skills and knowledge of women health workers, scientists, and researchers. On the flip side, the number of women pursuing a career in Science is nowhere near their male counterpart -- not to speak of women in leadership roles in this field. As another International Women’s Day arrives, the gender gap in Science awaits closure.

Albeit the lacunae, women like Gaiti Hasan, a SERB-Distinguished Fellow at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) at Bengaluru, and Aruna Dhathathreyan, an Emeritus Scientist and Professor (AcSIR), have made an immense contribution to Science.

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Gaiti Hasan’s journey began by studying zoology as an undergraduate. As she says, “This allowed me to identify some interesting unsolved problems in biology and I realised that the answers to these questions required modern molecular biology which I went on to study as a postgraduate and then for my PhD.”

Gaiti studied Life Sciences in JNU, did a PhD in Cambridge and her postdoctoral training in the Molecular Biology Unit in TIFR, Mumbai followed by a couple of years in Prof Michael Rosbash’s lab at Brandeis University in Boston.

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“During my PhD, I realised that a combination of molecular biology and genetics could be a very powerful tool to understand fundamental questions in biology. I switched to studying problems in neuroscience as a post-doc while continuing to use my training as a molecular geneticist,” said Gaiti whose working career has been spent in the NCBS, where she superannuated as a senior professor a few years back.

For the past 30 years, Gaiti’s group has worked at understanding the properties of a nerve cell that allow it to respond differently under different conditions.

“This property is based on a phenomenon called neuromodulation and it turns out that a simple chemical entity -- the calcium ion -- is important for this property,” she explained, adding, “we study how changes in the rise and fall of calcium levels inside the cell affect neuron function. It is known that the entry and exit of either too little or too much calcium within nerve cells affects their survival with age.”

Aruna Dhathathreyan and Gaiti Hasan. Credit: Special Arrangement

Their findings, she said, which have been mainly in the fruit fly Drosophila, helped them devise new experiments in mouse and human neurons that are currently in progress. “It is exciting that some of our work has relevance to understanding what causes neurodegeneration in humans,” Gaiti explained.

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Aruna Dhathathreyan remembers her school teachers teaching her concepts in science very well which made lessons pretty interesting for her, and from class eight she wanted to study only physics. “However, the lectures in my undergrad course in physics were pretty ordinary and insipid.”

“It was during my post-graduation that I happened to attend a lecture by Sir John Kendrew at the University of Madras where he spoke about structures of heme containing proteins. He talked about his Nobel Prize-winning work on the crystal structure of Myoglobin -- iron and oxygen-binding protein -- found in the skeletal muscle tissue of vertebrates in general and in almost all mammals. I got convinced that day. Biophysics seemed exciting,” Aruna recollected.

She later met a lot of biophysicists in India and at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry at Gottingen, Germany who became her role models.

Dr Aruna Dhathathreyan is developing a unique impedance-based instrument to uncover the mechanical properties of cells. She is using this to evaluate the elastic compliance of normal versus diseased cells and thus make it relevant in medical diagnostics, in studying cell defects, in sickle cell anemia and in wound healing.

So why aren't there many women in India like them, pursuing careers in sciences? “According to UNCTAD report India has the maximum number of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) graduates in the world (about 29.5 per cent),” Aruna said.

“CSIR where I have worked for nearly 30 years has 38 laboratories, an equal number of outreach centres, several innovation centres etc. Roughly women constitute 22 per cent to 25 per cent of the staff on an average. This includes researchers, scientists, technical staff, administrative staff etc. In some areas of science, we see the ratio of women to men increases to even 50 per cent to 51 per cent -- particularly in life sciences. But as we go higher up the rung, we notice vertical segregation and we start to see that there are less than 12 per cent to 14 per cent of women who are in senior positions and sitting in committees or in decision-making roles,” Aruna informed.

She feels the lack of female role models in STEM at school and in the workplace feeds disparities. “Not only are there fewer female teachers in STEM-related subjects as the level of education increases, but also the low participation of women working in STEM fields equates to fewer role models for girls.”

“There are few women at the top who can influence and motivate young girls to take up STEM education. In some cases, parents prefer the daughters to have an education which would get them a good job and a decent salary than struggle through a long, less-paying career in STEM,” she added.

Gaiti, who followed a step-by-step approach that helped her grow her scientific interests over time, said the entry of women into science at the undergraduate level is quite high in India. “However, they begin to drop out at the next and subsequent levels. Our scientific workplaces are not gender-equitable,” she said.

She said that paternity and maternity leave should be made available so that family responsibilities are shared equally. “There should be a workplace creche or remuneration for an external creche facility for parents with small children, and flexible working hours for men and women with small children,” she said.

Aruna also recollects that many women she has worked with aren’t very good at talking about their career goals and are even worse at asking for mentoring advice or support. “I don’t know why – might be because we’ve been raised to ‘not be a bother’? Are we worried about failure or being laughed at for dreaming the impossible?” she asks.

Clearly, the playing field needs to be levelled -- for the greater common good.