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Rohini M. Godbole, Neelima Gupte, Pratibha Jolly, Shobhana Narasimhan, and Sumathi Rao
Citation: AIP Conference Proceedings 795, 129 (2005); doi: 10.1063/1.2128297
View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.2128297
View Table of Contents: http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/proceeding/aipcp/795?ver=pdfcov
Published by the AIP Publishing
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Indian Institute of Science; 2Indian Institute of Technology Madras; 3Miranda House, University of Delhi;
4
Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research; 5Harish-Chandra Research Institute
As in most countries, the percentage of women in physics and other sciences in India is low; however, the nature
of the problem may be somewhat different in India than in many Western countries. For example, there does not
seem to be a general perception that women lack the intellectual skills required for a career in physics; instead, the
problems seem to arise more from societal perceptions of appropriate roles for women. In the last few years some
promising measures have been introduced to improve the situation of women in science in India.
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managed to set up these womens grievance cells at their home institutes, and other institutes have followed suit. A
panel on women in science was arranged at the annual meeting of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 2003. An
international conference, Women in Science: Is the Glass Ceiling Disappearing?, was held in 2004 to discuss
barriers to womens progress in the science and engineering disciplines. It brought together working scientists and
social scientists who studied gender issues. The 2004 international conference Statphys included a session on
women in physics, where it was agreed that while individual scientists may not feel they have faced discrimination,
the statistics indicate there is cause for concern. The IUPAP Conference on Physics Education, to be held in New
Delhi in August 2005, will include a session on teaching physics in ways that encourage and nurture women.
The Department of Science and Technology created fellowships to get women back into science after a break in
their career. In the 3 years since, about 600 women have benefited from them. The Department has also increased
the maximum age to qualify for government jobs by 5 years for women to allow for a break in their career. The
Scientific Advisory Committee to the Prime Minister is looking at ways to increase the number of women in
science. The University Grants Commission now gives 50 postdoctoral grants per year for women who have had a
career break. The LOreal Art & Science Foundation has started a fellowship for girls in Mumbai to pursue science.
Two of the major scientific academies in the country have recently paid attention to the problems of women in
science. In 2003 the Indian Academy of Sciences created a Committee on Women in Science. The convener of this
committee was Prof. Rohini Godbole, one of the authors and an invited speaker at the First IUPAP Conference. The
committee has recommended several measures to the Academy that have been accepted, such as compiling a larger
database of information about women in science; a role model program to involve mentoring, lectures, and
workshops for girl students in science; and books that give biographical sketches of eminent women scientists.
The Indian National Science Academy commissioned a survey to obtain information on the hurdles faced by
women who pursue scientific careers. The resulting report examines various aspects of the societal problems faced
by Indian women in the pursuit of science, and makes several concrete recommendations.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The following recommendations, most of which are in line with the IUPAP resolutions of the First and Second
International Conferences on Women in Physics, have been made by several of the above bodies:
Make new support systems, such as science camps for girls, for inclusion of underrepresented categories and
increasing the number of girls competing in university entrance exams (now very low in India).
Offer incentives to institutions to hire women and make it possible for spouses to work at the same institution.
Modify organizational structures to make workplaces more women-friendly. Child care, flextime, and parttime jobs are recommended. Some flexibility in rules regarding leave, age limits, and transfers is suggested.
Give accomplished women speaking slots at conferences and memberships on decision-making bodies.
Monitor compliance with the government mandate for grievance cells for sexual offenses and discrimination.
The ability to refer certain cases to a central cell for redress has also been recommended.
Unfortunately, the measures mentioned above may not solve the problems faced by women in surmounting the
barrier of the first faculty position; concrete measures to lower this barrier are called for. The exclusion of women
from informal networks of professionals is still difficult to overcome. Conscious and unconscious discouragement
faced by young women who want to take up careers needs to be countered by support groups and mentors, which do
not now exist to any great extent. The invisibility of women to groups that recommend career advancement of
various types persists. Finally, few initiatives are specific to women in physics as opposed to women in science.
REFERENCES
1. University Grants Commission, University Development in IndiaBasic Facts and Figures on Institutions of Higher
Education, Student Enrollment, and Teaching Staff, New Delhi: Information and Statistics Bureau.
2. N. Gupte, J. Gyanchandani, S. Nair, and S. Rao, Women in Physics: An Indian Perspective, in Women in Physics, The
IUPAP International Conference, AIP Conference Proceedings 628, American Institute of Physics, New York, 2002.
3. R. Godbole, N. Gupte, and S. Rao, Current Science, 83, 359 (2002).
4. Indian National Science Academy, Science Career for Indian Women, 2004 [www.insaindia.org/Scienceservice/science.htm].
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