𝗪𝗘 𝗖𝗔𝗡‼️ 𝗪𝗜𝗧𝗛 𝗪𝗘 𝗠𝗘𝗡 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗪𝗢𝗠𝗘𝗡 𝗜𝗡 𝗦𝗖𝗜𝗘𝗡𝗖𝗘 👨‍🔬👩‍🔬

February 13, 2022

February 11 is the International day for Women and Girls in Science.

( This blog was there in my draft for the past 2 months. Today I came to check my draft accidentally and found this. On reading, decided to publish this one. It's really relevant! )

February 11 got this designation in 2015 by UN and the purpose of this day is to achieve full and equal access to and participation in science for women and girls, and further achieve gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. 

Though women make up an equal proportion in the graduate and postgraduate levels they are disproportionate in the research field.  

If you are a woman, there is a distinct possibility that Alexa (the Google assistant) and SIRI (the Apple assistant) are less likely to process your voice accurately. In fact, Google’s voice recognition software is 70% less likely to recognize women’s voices accurately.

Translation software also has an inherent gender bias. There is another interesting example of gender bias in virtual reality, have you noticed headsets are too big for the average size of a woman’s head and women are experiencing more  motion sickness than men. The problem is not women, It is the gender data gap.

The consequences of the examples above may seem minor, but what if they were life-threatening? Look at another serious thing.

In the same car crash, women are 17 percent more likely to die than men. Also women are  47 percent more likely to get seriously injured (life-changing injuries, not just a silly scratch) in a car crash than men. Why? This is because vehicle safety systems such as seat belts, air bags etc are designed and tested based on male-shaped body dummies. In 2015, the EU decided to finally to introduce a female car crash test dummy. However, they introduced this dummy in one of the five regulatory tests and only in the passenger seats.

SO, do you think all of this would be true if women were the ones researching, innovating, designing, and implementing these technologies? If we encouraged girls into STEM track in education rather than steering them away? We think not.

Did you know that only 33 percent of researchers worldwide are women? Women in science are also less likely to be promoted, less likely to be awarded funding, and less likely to fill leadership and technical roles. On the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, we hope to change this narrative! We celebrate the achievements of women in this field and call for equal access to and participation in science for women and girls of all ages!

To discuss on all these issues Breakthrough Science Society, Trivandrum, organized a panel discussion and interaction with the students, on the topic "Women in science" on 13th February. It was a zoom meeting which started at 10.30am. I think it was a great chance for me to attend the talk. Our adored Mentor, Dr. Neena Thomas hosted the session and the panel included three esteemed personalities- Prof. Hema Somanathan, Dr. Manoj Puravankara and Dr. Resmi L. 

As already discussed in the introduction part, even though a major share the postgraduate holders (especially in India) are women than men they are not seen in the research field. Where are these girls disappearing???

The discussion tried to answer this question and it made suggestions to cure the problem. 

Manoj sir, through his presentation  introduced us various scholarship programmes and initiatives taken by India government to increase the women population in the research field and 'Leaky pipelines' was the main topic of his discussion.

 The women panelists- Hema ma'am and Resmi ma'am shared their experiences of being a women science aspirant and researcher. The talks were great and active participation of the students were commendable. The session was worthy. Thankyou Neena ma'am for giving this opportunity to attend the session.

"Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and, above all, confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained."

As Marie Curie said, let's don't give up. It's hard to get achieved in the patriarch society, but remember one thing- Science discriminate no  one. So it's our need ! It's our aim to contribute to the field of science!