Uma’s (name changed) academic track record was what any scientist would dream of: she completed her PhD in molecular biology, and continued on her career path after her marriage, becoming an Assistant Professor at a new Central University in the Northeast. Here, she set up a lab from scratch. When her baby was born, her supportive colleagues and neighbours took turns taking care of him. But then came the glitch: Uma was on contract, and when it came to making her post a permanent one, she found her name missing from the list. This was despite her important contributions to the institute.
She was never told why. But she speculates the reason. “I was the first woman at the institute to take maternity leave. And while I was not told explicitly by the administration that this was the reason, I got to learn of this through the grapevine,” she told Frontline. She followed her husband, a civil service officer, on his postings: first to Ladakh “where there were no opportunities in my field,” then to Lucknow where she worked as a research assistant for two years, and later to Goa where she applied to teach in high school. “But I was told I was over-qualified.” The pandemic dealt the final blow to her career. “I immersed myself in raising my son, his homework and athletics training.” But Uma has not lost hope. “Maybe, by the time my son is grown up, there would be opportunities to re-enter scientific research,” she says.
Uma has found a mentor in Madhura Kulkarni, a molecular geneticist and senior scientist who set up the Tumor Microenvironment Lab at the Centre for Translational Cancer Research, Pune. Madhura has been encouraging Uma, her friend, to return to research. Madhura would know the extraordinarily fraught career paths women scientists must negotiate. With a postdoctorate from Harvard Medical School and a work stint in Singapore, Madhura bagged a Department of Biotechnology “re-entry” fellowship (gender-neutral) to return to India, where she now focuses on breast cancer. “But I had to convince my mother every step of the way,” Madhura tells Frontline. “There was pressure not to pursue computer science, my first choice. Then the pressure to leave the workforce after my baby was born.” Her career trajectory could have “moved faster” without these social expectations, she adds. “Had it not been in my nature to fight back from a young age and push through, I probably would not have made it so far.”
Dramatic compromises
She talks of women scientists she has met who have had to make dramatic compromises in their careers: for instance, a PhD from Mumbai who worked with HIV patients, known for her pathbreaking work on genotypes—which she never published—now works as a nutritionist; a Canada-educated plant scientist who now works in the horticulture field. “But at least these women have figured out means to use their time and intellect,” she says.
Meanwhile, Madhura continues to find a way towards a leadership position “where my voice will count and I can reach and empower a larger community.”
Earlier this year, the Chairman of the University Grants Commission announced that India has set a world record with a 40 per cent enrolment of women in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). Over the past decade, the number of women completing PhDs had jumped by 107 per cent, he added. Belying this success story, however, are troubling statistics that indicate that legions of qualified women scientists are underrepresented in the scientific workforce, a gender gap that widens as they move up the academic hierarchy. A paper published in Nature earlier this year found that women made up a mere 16.7 per cent of STEM faculty in India. And in the country’s top eight institutes—Indian Institute of Science, Tata Institute for Fundamental Research and six Indian Institutes of Technology, women’s representation was even lower, at 10 per cent. Certain fields are more “socially acceptable” for women in science, the authors found: biology, for instance, considered a “soft science”, had a higher proportion of women faculty at 22.5 per cent, while engineering had the lowest share at 8.3 per cent.
The authors, Shruti Muralidhar and Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan surveyed 98 universities and institutes across the country and looked at seven different fields: biology, mathematics, earth sciences, physics, computer science, chemistry, and engineering. Among female faculty, they observed a decline in representation as their seniority grew: 46.3 per cent were in the early stages of their career, 27.5 per cent were mid-career, and just 26.2 per cent had reached the senior career benchmark. The authors found other areas of their underrepresentation. As many as 26 per cent of 124 science conferences documented between August 2021 and March 2023 had zero women speakers. Of these, an astonishing 83 per cent of chemistry conferences had no women speakers at all.
When the authors reached out to women scientists, they found they “face multiple insurmountable barriers during their career progression that result in them quitting STEM academia for other careers and ventures.” A major point of this attrition happens during the transition from postdoc to a faculty member position, which coincides with the social pressure to start a family, they add.
Women in STEM have reported facing everyday sexism. | Photo Credit: Getty Images
Karishma Kaushik, a physician and clinical microbiologist corroborates this. Marriage and motherhood “coincide with when women begin seeking their first real jobs after student life, such as faculty or scientist positions. Maternity leave also means time away from work or the need to reintegrate into the workforce (while managing multiple home and child-related responsibilities).” And when they do apply for a job, “they are likely to be perceived as employees who will be applying for long leave, such as maternity or childcare leave.”
Fewer women to follow
Karishma points to the “chicken and egg problem” for women scientists: the lack of role models. “Fewer women making it up the ladder means fewer women to follow, fewer women to lead other women, and so fewer women will make it up the ladder.”
Worryingly, says the Nature paper, “Most women scientists… are usually fearful of being vocal and visible in calling out systemic inequities. Especially in Indian STEM academia, such an outspoken attitude costs women in terms of grants, collaborations, goodwill, and career-advancing steps such as promotions.” The paper also points to senior women faculty leaving academia due to “toxic workplace climates.”
Lab Hopping: Women Scientists in India, co-authored by Nandita Jayaraj, a science communicator, documents the journeys of hundreds of women scientists around the country, negotiating the “old boys’ club” that is the world of science in India. In one chapter “A Hush-Hush Culture,” most scientists they quote tellingly wanted to stay anonymous. One mid-career woman scientist told the authors: “Gender bias is worse in India, and not even subtle, not with some dinosaurs controlling the top positions. We have to be soft enough to qualify as a ‘good woman’, but hard enough to fight for our space.” She spoke to the authors about everyday sexism: “At a meeting, I was consistently called beta (son) by a senior scientist.” But she added “It’s too early to take risks as I’m yet to break into the system. This would destroy my career.”
While women continue to fight their way into the workspace, there needs an institutional “shake-up,” Nandita told Frontline. “Everyday sexism and discrimination by colleagues and superiors are still routinely excused, and sexual harassment prevention protocols are not understood and enforced. If these factors don’t directly push women off the ladder, they discourage women from attempting to climb it.”
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Nandita, importantly, points out that policies that attempt to benefit women scientists must move beyond those “who are already socially privileged” to “those who belong to multiple marginalisations.” After all, “having a panel with 50-50 upper-caste men and upper-caste women is as bad as having a 100 per cent all-male panel,” she says. “Also, intersectional aspects of gender issues in science have to be addressed right now, not later.”
As early as 2010, Rohini Godbole—the noted physicist and champion for women in science, who passed away last month—co-authored a report titled “Trained Scientific Women Power: How Much Are We Losing and Why?” Some 568 women and 226 men with a PhD in science, engineering, and medicine (including those unemployed) were surveyed.
Most women in research said “family responsibilities” forced them to drop out of science. Then came disenabling organisational factors: lack of flexibility in timings, discriminatory work practices, lack of enough women colleagues, mentors and role models, and harassment.
However, the report concluded that policies to retain women in research need nuance: “the myth of ‘one size fits all’ accepted by science policymakers” needs questioning. But the first step to retaining women in science is data: beginning with the number of Indian women PhDs in science. “An important move in this direction will be to build on the existing database created by the IAS [The Indian Academy of Sciences]… targeting [its] completion within one year’s time.”
It is 2024. And we still have no such database—a basic first step that could help scientists like Uma, who waits at home hoping to return to her microscope one day.
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