Bangalore Literature Festival.
| Photo Credit: BHAGYA PRAKASH Okay / THE HINDU
There is a bent to see science as being above society, untouched by the common society’s biases, factors out impartial science journalist Nandita Jayaraj, the co-author of Lab Hopping: A Journey to Find India’s Women In Science. “But in contrast, it is sometimes amplified, “says Jayaraj, adding that questioning science and scientists is often discouraged. “Because of that, they get away with a lot,” she says at a session titled Lab Hopping: Women Scientists in India, one of the numerous that fashioned half of the twelfth version of the Bangalore Literature Festival on December 3.
Women in science
In a dialog along with her co-author, Aashima Dogra, which was moderated by journalist Divya Shekhar, Jayaraj and Dogra spoke in regards to the journey of writing their guide Lab Hopping, which featured ladies in the science trade, the gender gaps and the doable options to proceed with in the longer term.
Divya Shekhar began the session by talking in regards to the success of the Chandrayaan mission and how the picture of the ISRO ladies sporting brightly colored sarees and gajras had gone viral, “It’s very telling of the bias that we have against women scientists. Because this idea of Indian women in saris, in gajras in the setting of highly technological, very advanced space, it doesn’t really fit together so well,” says Aashima Dogra, including that this cultural second was a big one.
The duo additionally went on to speak in regards to the genesis of their guide, which started its life as a feminist science multimedia platform referred to as The Life of Science. “We had time on our hands, were young, and liked to travel,” remembers Jayaraj, recalling how they ended up visiting components of the nation that aren’t often related to science, together with Kalimpong in West Bengal and Aluva in Kerala. “There were laboratories that were working there. And there were people that were doing different kinds of science there. And to our surprise there were women in most of these places doing science there,” says Nandita Jayaraj of their guide, Lab Hopping, an investigative look into the gender hole in Indian science.
People attending the twelfth Edition Bangalore Literature Festival.
| Photo Credit:
MURALI KUMAR Okay
Motherhood
Other key points which cropped up throughout the dialogue included a scarcity of help programs inside the trade, how motherhood and household affect women’s science careers, and the gender stereotypes in the trade, amongst different issues. “I think the patriarchy and the prejudice. can sometimes lead to people not being understood, and lead to people feeling that they are not being heard,” factors out Shekhar. Dogra provides. “I think the hope from this book really is to kind of have the conversation about our science culture…to open it up,” she says.
