India needs women saying Eureka!

BANGALORE: : Name a few women scientists?: Madame Marie Curie, ......??: Name a few Indian womenscientists? : ...............??That's the pattern some of India's foremost women scientistsencountered when they began looking into why the number of girls entering intoscience research is far less than those who actually take up the subject at theunder-graduate and postgraduate levels."Becoming a scientist has notbeen encouraged as a career for girls. Even after they do their masters inscience subjects, they gravitate towards a teaching career rather than taking upresearch," IISc professor and physicist Rohini Godbole said. Thesolution: a two-pronged role model programme, which consists of preparingbio-sketches of some of India's pioneering women scientists like opticalphysicist Anna Mani, Kamala Sohni, Janaki Ammal and Asima Chatterjee.In addition, the IndianNational Science Academy (INSA) and the Indian Academy of Science will be askedto cooperate on instituting a fellowship to enable women scientists across thecountry to give lectures and talks to students. The initiative is headed byGodbole."When asked about women scientists, Marie Curie's name comesup and then the lists stops. Maybe a few more names come to mind if the personis really into science, but otherwise, there is so little that is known.If girls in school and college can hear first-hand about the workthat women scientists are doing, it will enthuse them about taking up researchas a career," she said. Bio-sketches will be published as a book byone of the scientific bodies. "That's the first step. We will thenhave to approach the government and request them to publish these sketches inlarge numbers, so that they can be distributed among schools and colleges. Wehope girls will be enthused when they see such stories documented," she said.Enrolment at various levels: Graduation - 39%,Post-graduation - 42.5%, PhD - 37.2% Only four states - Goa, Kerala,Punjab and Pondicherry have more than 50% enrolment in science. ArunachalPradesh, Bihar, Orissa and Rajasthan have less than 35%. In IISc,only 6.6% of the total academic staff of 316 are women, while 9.7% of scientificstaff of 113 are women. Source: INSA