Opinion Launched on International Day For Girls and Women in Science, will SWATI break old habits?

The high level of nuance in this report could be chalked down to it being a product of collaboration between scientists and social scientists. Though a social issue, the Indian scientific community rarely engages with social scientists on the gender gap plaguing it. Consequently, discourse on the topic largely relies on the fallacy that only marriage and motherhood are to blame.

A slew of other initiatives followed that first report by INSA. Highlights include the Indian Academy of Sciences’ (IASc) compendium Lilavati’s Daughters and a national conference featuring over a thousand women scientists. Both happened in 2008. The latter was organised by a Department of Science and Technology (DST) task force set up in response to the INSA report. The national conference is especially notable because it featured some groundbreaking announcements by then Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal: He promised women scientists flexible working hours, in-house creches, work-from-home options, research grants and residential accommodation.

Unfortunately, the standing committee set up to implement Sibal’s promises never took off.

In 2010, another team of sociologists and scientists backed by IASc released a report that focused on why women scientists leave academia. A survey of about 800 scientists, both men and women, threw up several revelations. When asked why so many women drop out of science, most men pinned the blame on family and sociocultural factors. The women agreed but a significant proportion pointed out that the lack of opportunities and disabling organisational factors (flexible timings, logistics and infrastructure, discrimination, etc) were also setting them back. Expectedly, these were also the areas that the women felt needed improvement to enable them to stay in science. The men, however, believed that their female peers could also benefit from refresher courses, fellowships, awareness and sensitisation campaigns.

Uncovering gendered perceptions is tremendously helpful in understanding where policies come from and why they look the way they do. It explains why we see so many initiatives that “help” or “motivate” girls and women to stay in science — mentorship programmes, workshops, books about role models, and women-specific awards/grants. The subtext of this approach is that it is the females who need to be “fixed”. This is a sore topic among many women in science, but what else can we expect from a top brass that has always been male-dominated?

While these initiatives may be needed, they’re not enough. We also need rules and laws to address the unique challenges faced by women from multiple marginalities of caste, transgender identity and disability. Gender equity policies need to boldly state that discrimination exists, and engage with the idea of placing some accountability on the overrepresented in science — upper caste cis-men.

Newer initiatives like the Gender Advancement for Transforming Institutions (GATI) charter and the draft Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (STIP) 2020 have adopted more progressive language — for instance, they bring up transgender identities and gender-neutral parental leave. Unsurprising, as these policies involved a more inclusive group, comprising cis and trans women scientists and sociologists.

Last week, a new acronym started doing the rounds: SWATI, or Science For Women: A Technology & Innovation. This is the name of a portal that will be launched on February 11, celebrated worldwide as International Day For Girls and Women in Science, by a panel representing scientists from INSA, IASc and the third academy National Academy of Sciences India (NASI). An active inter-academy panel offers hope that the three academies’ gender gap-related efforts will be more streamlined.

Good intentions notwithstanding, it is prudent to be wary, considering how often new initiatives are launched with much hype, only to fizzle out soon after. SWATI itself has been victim to this. It was first announced on International Women’s Day in 2021 by then Department of Biotechnology (DBT) chief Renu Swarup as a “portal dedicated to all Women Scientists in DBT and its Autonomous Institutions”. There was no word about it after that until recently. Over the past few weeks, the panel has been soliciting women in science to sign up for SWATI’s 2024 avatar through a Google form. However, there is no disclosure of how this personal information will be used and what it means to sign up for SWATI.

It remains to be seen if the inter-academy panel can break old habits and be more inclusive, transparent and efficient. There are a number of positive signs: The SWATI form is inclusive of all non-male genders, and does not seem to impose criteria such as PhDs. This acknowledges that cis-women are not the only marginalised gender, and that women work in science in various capacities with or without specific degrees. It is also refreshing to see that the panel is composed of men and women scientists — a nod to the fact that equity is not just a women’s issue.

Jayaraj and Dogra are independent science journalists and co-authors of Lab Hopping: A Journey to Find India’s Women in Science