(Lightly edited for readability)
Speakers: Subhra Priyadarshini, Prajval Shashtri, Srubabati Goswami, Megan Urry, Ram Ramaswamy, Lilia Meza-Montes, Vandana Nanal
00:48 Subhra Priyadarshini: Sexism and patriarchy directly trigger inequities in science and research. That's perhaps old news. Inequities, of course, could be based on gender, caste, age, or ability. And now, they are increasingly being called out, questioned, and sometimes corrected in heartening and exemplary ways.
Today, we are talking about a group of women scientists in India who felt the need to call such iniquities into question and do something about it, and not just push it into a time in future when there will hypothetically be enough women leaders to make change. This group of women physicists in India is vocal about gender issues in a discipline of science that has traditionally been considered a male bastion.
I am your host Subhra Priyadarshini. And on this episode of the nature India podcast, we take a look at what triggered the formation of the Gender in Physics Working Group at the Indian Physics Association, and how that is changing the gender discourse in physics in India. And while we are at it. we will sneak peek at a big International Conference on Women in Physics happening in July 2023, in India for the first time.
But first let me turn to Prajval Shastri, past chair of this gender in physics working group to give us a little bit of background. What kinds of experiences really triggered this movement?
02:29 Prajval Shashtri: Well, so it was both my own experiences and how my women and men peers were treated. Decades ago when I was a PhD student, there was this really annoying experience of being seen as a woman first, above all else, rather than as an ordinary PhD student passionate about doing science. Of course, there were the usual things, you know, like women being expected to play so called womanly roles, like handling the snacks and so on. There was also the shocking way in which institutions handled bad behavior, which we now call sexual harassment, although when I was a student, we didn't even know that phrase. So it was bad enough that the bad behavior happened, but the way institutions handled them was in this, sort of, 'boys will be boys' kind of framework. And that was really shocking. And I saw this happen repeatedly. I started to see that meritorious women were disqualified based on their family status, and only women were disqualified, not the men. But I personally have known cases where a woman's application was not even considered if the people on the committee somehow found out by some other means that she had a fiance or significant other in a different city. I have also multiple times heard this statement: "How can we give two jobs to the same family?".
And this was indeed reflected in the landmark study commissioned by the Indian Academy of Sciences and led by sociologist Anita Kurup, where they did a survey and they found a similar result that women with PhDs in science who did not have jobs did not say that it was because of family responsibilities that they were not in the mainstream. They said it was because they didn't get jobs. I have heard and seen scientists, even my own colleagues, encourage young men who come to us as summer students or interns. To the corresponding young women, they will say that the young women have to work really very hard in order to manage their family and do their physics at the same time. And they cannot have it all because physics is difficult.
Scientists are being oblivious to the fact that young women also exercise agency and choice and that oblivion is quite disconcerting. Basically, societal sexism and patriarchy has leaked into the physics profession very intensely.
04:52 Subhra Priyadarshini: And so obviously, people in leadership positions need to be cognizant of these issues.
04:59 Prajval Shashtri: So the need of the hour is to then educate our leaders of institutions, the gatekeepers faculty members, indeed everybody, about how patriarchy has played out in our society. And, therefore, how we are all, regardless of our gender, brought up to accept the 'sexist thought and sexist action', to quote Bell Hooks.
So we need to look at the evidence and we've published some of it in our papers. And we need to stop shooting these loose cannon balls, you know, things like, things will only change if we start young, things will only happen if we have women leaders, etc. because they just become excuses for inaction on what can be changed here and now.
05:41 Subhra Priyadarshini: And that's how this working group was born?
05:45 Prajval Shashtri: It was actually triggered by my participation in the International Conference of Women in Physics of the IUPAP. And the most important outcome of these conferences is the recommendations for the physics profession, which countries then debate in their own national forums. In 2011, I first participated as India's team leader in the series of conferences, and I realised with a bit of a shock that every country had their national forum, but India did not have such a forum. The Indian physics Association (IPA), which was a membership driven professional association was the right association under which to have such a working group. I submitted a proposal to the IPA on Women's Day actually, in 2016. They formally approved it a year later, and I became the first chair.
06:39 Subhra Priyadarshini: This was 2017. These women in physics have mandated themselves to raise awareness of gender issues. Srubabati Goswami, a professor in the theoretical physics division of the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad tells us how the movement is reaching deeper and wider.
07:01 Srubabati Goswami: We are also coordinating the participation of India in the International Conference on Women in physics and in presenting the general status of India in country papers in these conferences. And we formed gender groups in sub areas of physics, like we have a gender group in high energy physics and condensed matter physics to discuss in depth about the specific issues that a subject can face. And we are also coordinating with the Astronomical Society of India's gender group, the working group on gender equality. Recently we have started organizing a lecture series called PaVi Nari, Padarth Vigyan ki Nari, in which we are having lectures on women pioneers in physics, who often are forgotten and ignored in history, to showcase their work as a token of intergenerational solidarity, as well as to inspire younger generation.
08:01 Subhra Priyadarshini: A significant milestone in this journey of women in physics in India has been the Hyderabad charter, a set of guiding principles that has now been endorsed by over 500 physicists committed to the cause.
08:15 Srubabati Goswami: In 2019, we organised a conference in Hyderabad University. This was the first conference in India in which thre were physicists and also social scientists. And these discussions were written up in our guiding document called the Hyderabad charter.
08:35 Prajval Shashtri: So the Hyderabad Charter is a set of 10 guiding principles for people to keep in mind when they design mitigation interventions, and a set of recommendations, for institutions, for the classroom, for conferences, and for national agencies. It was inspired by something called the Baltimore charter by the American Astronomical Society, which came out in 1992. That landmark event happened while I was a postdoc in the US, and it really opened my eyes to the causes of the gender gap that we see are systemic and structural within our profession. And more importantly, there are too many interventions today, which are in the framework of fixing the women, and the charter is clearly and loudly stepping away from that. So hiring, promotion, leadership positions, all of these need to be based on evaluating the individual's merit alone, without any hidden norms about family status, and all of that. And also, mentors need to mentor young people in the same way regardless of the agenda, and encourage them equally.
09:42 Subhra Priyadarshini: The Baltimore charter of 1992 inspired the Hyderabad charter. Director of the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics Megan Urry was one of the authors of the Baltimore Charter. Meg is telling us now what she thinks has changed since then or what has remained the same.
10:02 Megan Urry: I remember when we were organizing the Baltimore meeting, one of the people on the organizing committee, so someone who presumably was committed to doing this, he asked us to start the meeting with a discussion of whether or not there was any discrimination against women in astronomy. I was totally gobsmacked. I mean, really, really, that's what we were talking about? But later, I realised, well, if he you know, if he needed to be persuaded, then that's telling you where you are, you are pretty far back in terms of progress. Anyway, I think worldwide, the discussion of the rights of women has certainly advanced in the last 30 years, but I think we still have a long way to go. It's easier to deal with that if you have a class-based society where you can afford to get help raising your family. Or if you are actually in a liberated society where many men feel it is half their job to help raise children. But if in India, that is not the norm, then I think that's a cultural, societal barrier that has to be overcome in some way.
11:08 Subhra Priyadarshini: Most of these discussions also point to the importance of male allies in the gender discourse. Ram Ramaswamy of the department of chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi tells us what it takes for allies to support the cause and help move the needle.
11:29 Ram Ramaswamy: For about 20-25 years now, in India particularly, we have suddenly woken up to the fact that all our organizations are not very diverse and not very inclusive. And the only way in which this could have changed is that, you know, those who are already in the system were aware or were made aware of the lacuna. In short, without allies, this entire discourse could not have started. And it was important that there were some people who realised early on, that the state of affairs could not continue the way it has been going on for the past so many years
12:12 Subhra Priyadarshini: Two of Ram's much acclaimed books, 'Lilavati's Daughters' and 'The Girl's Guide to a Life in Science' have actually had a solid impact on these discourses in India.
12:26 Ram Ramaswamy: I'm not sure that they have done much more more than to sensitize a lot of different people. Actually, Lilavati's Daughters and the Girls Guide, which I co edited with Rohini Godbole, who was one of the early champions of this discussion, was an outgrowth of the an effort by the Indian Academy of Sciences. And they were just asking a question of, you know, how do we attract more women into science? What was unusual about Lilavati's Daughters, which we did not realize at the time, is that we talked about fairly ordinary people, you know. I mean, they were extraordinary women. But, you know, we didn't have to wait for them to get Nobel Prizes before we saw them as role models. But we felt it was important to tell the story from the viewpoint of a woman who was successful without being extraordinarily so. That is to say, we weren't looking for the Marie Curies but we were just looking for people who other people could emulate.
It is a point that has been made frequently that Indian science is dominated by upper class, upper caste elite. And this is also true of the kind of representation of people there is in Lilavati's Daughters. There were a few people from some areas, there are a lot of people in mathematics, a lot of people in theoretical physics, and you know, representation was skewed. And at some point in time, we said that we want to talk to a young girl who is trying to choose a career. So we should really try to make a book which would be something like an A to Z of women in science. So you know, women in astronomy, women in biology, women in chemistry, go all the way up till women in zoology, different regions of the country, different groups, different communities, and so on.
14:23 Subhra Priyadarshini: And how does all of this fit into the global picture for women, particularly in physics? Lilia Meza-Montes, chair of the global union working group for women in physics from the Institute of Physics at Mexico's Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla, explains how.
14:44 Lilia Meza-Montes: Let me tell you something about the Global Gender Gap in Science project. This was funded by the International Science Council, and it organized a remarkable survey in 2018. There were around 32,000 respondents from 159 countries, half male and half female. It showed that the gender gap in science exists across all regions among development levels, students, postdocs, scholars, and among all participant disciplines. In summary, women's experiences are less positive than men's. In physics in particular, this is highly relevant for two reasons. First, the percentage of women in this discipline is low. And second, as a consequence of the first one, women developed their activities in a masculine environment, in many cases in disadvantage, because they are in charge of duties assigned by traditional roles, such as child and elder care.
Therefore, we have two challenges in our community, first to increase the number of female physicists and at the same time, build a supportive environment with equitable opportunities for everybody where this is still lacking,
16:07 Subhra Priyadarshini: The global physicists community through conferences such as the International Conference of women in physics is actively supporting local country based efforts, for instance, the ones in India.
16:21 Lilia Meza-Montes: In my case, I can tell you that I attended this conference, it has been very, very important because I have seen several initiatives in different countries and I tried to adapt it in not only in Mexico but also in the regional level. And it has been successful. In India, I have seen that there are many programmes to support women and to encourage young girls to study physics, science in general, but physics in particular. So that's why it is very important to have all this framework, and in particular, also, organizing the eighth conference now, in July. It will be also be a hallmark because now, many participants from India would be able to exchange ideas.
17:12 Subhra Priyadarshini: The International Conference of Women in Physics is being hosted in India online in July this year. Vandana Nanal, the national chair of the gender and physics working group of the Indian Physics Association explains what the Indian edition might try to achieve.
17:33 Vandana Nanal: So we feel this is an fantastic opportunity for India to increase the awareness locally as well as globally. About 80 countries participate. And we really look forward to these deliberations. Because the outcomes will, like the Hyderabad charter, give us some guidelines to present to the authorities, to see very crucial input before significant policies are made, or the changes which are required in the policies, and so on. The very early participation of very senior physicists like Prof. Nandini Trivedi, who now is in the US, Prof. Sumati Rao, Prof. Rohini Godbole, Prof. Nilima Gupte. We have organized many satellite events around the main conference, showcasing the work done by women physicists, also discussing pertinent issues like career challenges for women. We will have several panel discussions like discussing women's role in leadership. There are also some focused effort for women recruitments in various institute's and we hope we can come up with some concrete suggestions for that. In fact, we are sure of that. I think this is one very important achievement to break the stereotypes and move on.
18:45 Subhra Priydarshini: And on that positive note, we hope the women in physics achieve greater milestones in all that they aspire to do. Some of the personal stories of repression and harassment that we heard from many women scientists and their allies did not make it to this podcast, just to safeguard them from any possible backlash. And of course, with the hope that these stories remain in the past. Here's hoping science and research, especially physics, is rid of iniquities of all kinds in times to come.
It's me your host Subhra Priyadarshini, signing off from this episode of the Nature India podcast. Keep listening to us as we embark on another brand new season.
