The situation of women scientists also needs to improve significantly. Although a highly educated tribe, women scientists in India (and globally) are far from achieving parity with their male colleagues despite some attempts at various levels. Throughout institutions of higher education and research in India, whether in civilian area or defence, the proportion of women scientists is very low. Best case scenario in natural sciences is commonly seen in biology but even there, proportion of women is around 20-25% based on many small sample-based reports. There are, of course, no reliable, nationwide comprehensive data available.

One reason put forward for the smaller proportions is that women do not enter the field in large enough numbers. If this is the case, that in itself is a societal problem of discrimination faced by women. However, in India based on data available in the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) report 2020-2021, it is clear that enrolment of women for doctoral degree is close to 50%. In most institutions this certainly has been the case in the discipline of biology for more than two decades. However, those highly qualified women do not find a place in academic institutions in the same proportion. This is what is described as the leaky pipeline.

Over the past 20 years, a number of research institutions pursuing biology research has gone up, though these numbers are far lower than what would have been considered good for buzzing research activity in the country. However, the number and proportion of women researchers in biology has only increased marginally, notwithstanding their comparable presence with men during the doctoral training.

There have been quite a few efforts to analyse the reasons for presence of fewer women as faculty members in the natural sciences. Indian National Science Academy had brought out a report in 2004 in his context. A task force set up by the ministry of science and technology in 2005 also brought out their own report. In 2010, a report from National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, specifically explored reasons as to why we are losing trained scientific woman-power. Inter-academy panel of the three National Science Academies brought out its report in 2016. And Niti Aayog sponsored another report which was also brought out in 2016. The data presented in all these reports reflect a similar picture as described above, that women find it much harder to get jobs as a faculty member in any of the public sector organisations in India. After identifying the prevalent situation, some of the reports have explicitly recommended steps to improve the status with regular monitoring and performing gender audit of every government-funded autonomous or otherwise institutions, which include research institutions and universities, both.

Not much has happened on the ground. Provision of creches at every workplace, though a necessity for every working parent of any gender, is not strictly implemented. Another change introduced is making presence of at least one woman in every selection/interview committee mandatory. But this has not helped in addressing the problem. On the contrary, it has increased the administrative workload of a few women scientists since they end up participating in many more committees as compared to their male colleagues.

Many of the recommendations emerging from these reports are common. But why are they remaining mostly on paper? This is not new to us as a country. We do have very many rules and regulations which look ideal on paper but our ability, as a nation, to implement and monitor with adequate funding resources and manpower is very poor. Take example of 2013 law for Prevention of Sexual Harassment (SH) at Workplace. The law mandates that every organisation with more than ten employees (all employees, not women employees) should have its own Internal Committee (IC). This law was one of the positive outcomes of the Justice Verma Commission established after the rape case in Delhi in 2012. The law gives a significant power to the IC and its mandate is not only to handle the cases of SH but also conduct regular, repeated and frequent sessions of gender sensitisation to cover all members at the workplace. In reality, many scientific institutions have formed ICs, but their functioning is far from efficient and satisfactory. Many academic institutions in the developed countries have made it mandatory for everyone to go through a short course on gender sensitisation and pass a test. These are not to be taken once in a lifetime but periodically. No such system exists in this country and there is a real need to find ways of increasing societal, collegial sensitivity to this issue.

About a year ago some women biologists in India have come together to form a group called Partnership of Women for Equity in Research in Biology (POWERBio), https://powerbio.in/index.php). They are hoping to highlight the problems they face as a community, provide mentorship to younger colleagues and push for gender sensitisation on a wider scale within the organisations. This may pave the way for further improvement if their voice is heard by gender-sensitive powers that be.

This article is authored by Vineeta Bal, retired scientist and immunologist, IISER, Pune.