Scientists on how they are navigating biases and challenges
Sandhya Visweswariah grew up in different parts of the world before beginning her academic journey in India. She completed her early schooling in England and her O levels (equivalent to 10th standard in India) in Zambia. Then, Sandhya came to India for her undergraduate studies at Osmania University, Hyderabad, her postgraduate at IIT Kanpur, and her PhD at IISc.
After doing industrial research at AstraZeneca and realising it was not her cup of tea, she joined the Department of Molecular Reproduction,
Development and Genetics (now the Department of Developmental Biology and Genetics) at IISc as an assistant professor in 1993. Her 32 years at the Institute researching cell signalling and communication have been immensely satisfying. “I have had great students and colleagues throughout my career which has made it possible for me to do the science that I’ve done,” says Sandhya.
As a woman faculty member, Sandhya has faced her share of hurdles and gender bias. One irksome experience that she has consistently dealt with is being addressed as “Dear Sir” in emails even within IISc. Initially, she brushed it off. After some time, however, she started to reply: ‘Please do not write Dear Sir since I do not read those emails. There are women faculty on campus. Write Dear Sir/Madam or just write Dear Professor.’ “Sometimes, I’ve even replied ‘Does this apply to me? I am not a Sir,’” she says, laughing. Such oversights are not as common in other countries where researchers and staff receive regular training on communication etiquette, she points out.
Sandhya also tries to recruit more female students and researchers into her lab. “The ratio of men vs women swings on and off but there is a conscious effort from my side to try to maintain a 50-50 ratio.”
‘The ratio of men vs women swings on and off but there is a conscious effort from my side to try to maintain a 50-50 ratio’
Sandhya is one of many women faculty members across India and IISc who have had to contend with challenges that arise outside of the research that they do. In recent years, there have been increased efforts to boost the number of women pursuing STEM careers, sensitise researchers on the need to avoid gender bias and “manels”, and provide institutional support and policies for women faculty members and students. For many women, however, gender bias is still an everyday battle, hampered by the rigidity of social norms that are slow to change.
“Unfortunately, the role of a woman in India is still considered to be a good wife and a mother in many sections of society,” Sandhya says. While this may be true for women in other countries also, many have greater choice, freedom and flexibility in professional settings with supportive resources and facilities like daycare centres. Things are improving here too, she says. Daycare facilities at IISc, for instance, were started about seven years ago. Initiatives have been started to support women researchers like stopping the tenure clock for women faculty who have children during their tenure, and extending maternity breaks for students.
Sandhya feels that similar initiatives are needed across all Indian institutions. Scientists and administrators must also realise that hiring more women brings something diverse and valuable to the scientific community, she adds. “If the calibre of the two candidates is the same at the time of recruitment, pick the woman,” she says.
When Madhavi Latha Gali joined the Department of Civil Engineering at IISc in 2004, she was its first female faculty member. After completing a PhD in civil engineering at IIT Madras, a postdoc from IISc, and a year-long stint as an assistant professor at IIT Guwahati, she came back to IISc to share her learnings with aspiring civil engineers. “It was not as easy when I joined as it is today,” she recalls.
Back then, there were no exclusive toilets for women in the department. There were only men’s toilets. “I had to really fight to get a women’s toilet for the geotechnical engineering building,” she says.
Today, Madhavi, who is the Chair of the Centre for Sustainable Technologies (CST), is happy to note there are almost as many female students as males in the department. “I would say the ratio is 40-60,” she says. Over the years, she has tried to make her lab more inclusive for her female students, for example, by making helpers assist women students in experiments that require heavy lifting so that they can keep pace with male students. Her door is always open for female students to share their concerns, she says. “Being a woman, I make sure I understand what they need.”
Being a woman, I make sure I understand what female students really need
Sending female students outside for fieldwork also poses challenges, especially when it might require a few days’ stay on site. “The conditions at the site are not typically conducive for female students to stay,” she says. These can be remote construction sites with less accessibility to resources and poor safety.
Madhavi herself has travelled extensively for fieldwork to inspect various project sites including rock slopes, underground mines, and tunnels. She says she’s experienced subtle biases that seem innocuous but stand out all the same. For example, when she was in Jammu to carry out a site inspection for the Chenab railway bridge project, she was constantly told to “be careful” and several people tried to assist her when she was climbing hill slopes. Madhavi realises that most of them were probably not doing this deliberately, but were simply unaware of their own biases.
Purvi Gupta enjoyed solving problems right from her school days.
After obtaining a Bachelor’s degree from Saint Stephen’s College, Delhi, she joined the integrated PhD programme in Mathematics at IISc but moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan to pursue her doctoral studies after obtaining a Master’s degree from IISc.
As an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics, IISc, Purvi reflects on how her understanding of what it means to be a mathematician has evolved over her journey. “In the beginning, you imagine you’re going to prove many new theorems, and have a new idea every day,” she says. But, nowadays, a large part of her day is devoted to understanding others’ work. “There is so much that we don’t understand,” she says. Purvi also enjoys teaching maths and giving talks.
It is during the latter that Purvi recalls facing some instances of subtle discrimination. For instance, after giving some talks, she has received comments about her physical appearance rather than about the talk itself. “In any other context [this] is already unwelcome, but in a professional [setting], it is even more so,” she says. Sometimes, Purvi calls people out for their inappropriate comments. She also points out that some people mean well and do not realise what they say is unprofessional. “The gap in their understanding of these things is so wide that I don’t necessarily think it’s their fault,” she says.
‘Students today are more aware about the language related to discrimination’
Having open conversations about such things can help, she feels. She says that students today are more aware about the language related to discrimination, which wasn’t the case earlier. However, their understanding of these matters may not always be based on lived experience. Nevertheless, she finds it heartening when students walk into her office and use the right words and etiquette.
Purvi has also observed how analytical and theoretical disciplines are assumed to be male domains. Several studies show that students tend to take women professors less seriously than their male counterparts and the difference is starker in such disciplines, she points out. “I think the bias is then compounded by the fact that you don’t see [many] women in these fields. It’s sort of self-fulfilling,” she says.
One factor that may cause women to drop off from their careers, Purvi says, is social responsibilities. Even in fields like mathematics that do not involve experimental work, a lot of mental space and time is greatly needed to theorise.
On a positive note, Purvi says that many of her colleagues do want a higher representation of women at various levels in the Institute. “For instance, celebratory messages are exchanged if, some year, an unprecedented number of women enroll in any of our programmes.”
Looking back, Shefali Srivastava feels that she was rather lucky to have a family that supported her academic journey, including her grandparents. “My grandfather has a PhD in philosophy and my grandmother has a double MA. They are very well-read,” she explains. After her Bachelor’s degree at Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Shefali came to IISc to pursue her Integrated PhD. She approached Prerna Sharma at the Department of Physics for a project and has continued her PhD in the same lab. “She encouraged me a lot … and said, ‘we will do physics that is different from what you do and see now.’”
Shefali is grateful for having a female PI (Principal Investigator) and supportive lab mates. It is particularly helpful when she gets painful menstrual cramps every month. “If I don’t take painkillers and try to work, I faint,” she explains. Taking this into account, she plans her experiments such that for the first two days of her cycle, she can rest. She has support from Prerna, who does not ask for her reports during those two days. “I am privileged because my PI is a lady.”
She recounts stories of other female students who feel shy or awkward to divulge this information to their PIs. She questions the overall taboo around talking about menstruation, even within the family. “It is 2025. You should be able to talk about this, right?”
While there is talk of menstrual leaves in the workplace, Shefali feels that there should be a general humanitarian leave for female students who are doing their PhD and lab work. Other PIs should also understand that certain behaviours like mood swings or inability to focus may be because of hormonal issues. Simple steps would help, Shefali points out, like setting up more sanitary napkin dispensers in all departments.
One thing that Shefali is not worried about though is safety. When she walks back to the hostel from the lab late at night, she sees a security guard present every few hundred metres. “I am [also] glad that guards check IDs for entry into the campus,” she says.
Issues that women deal with in labs and academic spaces are derivative of larger social gaps present in Indian science, according to Aashima Dogra, an independent science journalist and editor. Early on in her career, she noticed that most stories she worked on had the same template with men as heroes. Aashima and Nandita Jayaraj, her colleague and ‘partner-in-crime’, set out to search and share lesser-known stories of women researchers on a science media platform they started, which recently spun off as the book Lab Hopping: Women Scientists in India.
Aashima believes that the poor representation of women in STEM is only one part of a larger problem. “When young women enter these labs, the odds are stacked against them,” she points out. In their work, the duo come across several stories, incidents, and confessions from scientists and students about how academic labs are run, and the kind of challenges, large and small, that women face. “It’s not necessarily true that a male scientist will run a bad, non-inclusive lab and a woman scientist always runs a great inclusive lab,” Aashima says.
One way to fight invisible systemic barriers, according to Aashima, is for the PIs to be vocal about being inclusive. This could be through watching out for opportunities that women are passed over for, conducting bystander training for students on witnessing harassment and how to report it, and ensuring that lab members are aware of the Internal Committee Against Sexual Harassment (ICASH) composition and guidelines at the institute.
One way to fight invisible systemic barriers is for the PIs to be vocal about being inclusive
More importantly, PIs should also follow up on their inclusivity initiatives and efforts over extended time periods. Crucially, institutions must also step in by enforcing inclusivity guidelines, collecting diversity data, and providing support and understanding to many women researchers, who struggle to juggle research with societal expectations. As Aashima points out: “For example, a promising PhD student might have three children, hence may require some extra flexibility in the lab to thrive in their research.”
(Edited by Abinaya Kalyanasundaram, Ranjini Raghunath)
