Article

Editor’s Introduction 145

From Numbers Contemporary Education Dialogue

9(2) 145–171
to Structures: © 2012 Education Dialogue Trust
SAGE Publications
Navigating the Los Angeles, London,
New Delhi, Singapore,
Complex Terrains Washington DC
DOI: 10.1177/097318491200900202
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Education and
Feminism

Chayanika Shah

Abstract
This article describes a personal and disciplinary journey in, around and
between getting more women in science and changing the nature of
science education. Using the framework of Feminist Science Studies,
I explore the gendered nature of science and offer a suggestion to make
it more contextualised and more located in its specific setting. This will
be beneficial not only for those excluded from science education but
also for the provision of a better science education itself.

Keywords
Science education, gender and science, feminism, feminist science
studies, women in science

I begin this article with two comments.

‘Yeh Pammi Bua ko nahin aayega ...’

Chayanika Shah is Visiting Faculty, MA Elementary Education Programme at

the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India. She is also a member of
Lesbians and Bisexuals in Action (LABIA), a Queer Feminist LBT Collective
based in Mumbai. Her research interests include Feminist Science Studies,
Science Education, Feminist Studies particularly in Health and Reproductive
Technologies, Gender and Sexuality Issues and Queer Theory.
E-mail: chayanikashah@gmail.com
146 Chayanika Shah

This is a 10-year-old boy’s casual comment on his aunt’s ability to help

him with his physics homework. He may have known that his aunt was
a scriptwriter and a researcher, but had no clue about her proficiency or
lack thereof in school science. He probably just had a vague notion of the
kind of person who would know science, and it is my presumption that
the aunt’s gender was one of the descriptors that determined her ability
or lack of it.

‘Feminism in a science education course ...?!’

This is a reaction we often get in response to the course on science

education that I co-teach in a master’s degree programme in elementary
education.1 The course, although initially slated as a pedagogy course,
developed quite differently, turning into a course that focuses on interro-
gating the nature of science itself. It offers feminist critiques as one of
the important lenses for refracting science as a knowledge system, and
for examining its methods, its historical journeys and its philosophical
and sociological roots/routes. The response is joyous or dismayed,
depending on the point of view of the person responding. In any case,
there is an element of incredulousness in the tone.
In this article, I describe a personal and disciplinary journey in, around
and between these two comments. Through these two remarks, I shall
chart the terrain of gender and science education. Needless to say, this is
also a journey of feminisms that starts with visibilising women in every
discipline and then turns towards emphasising a world view that contrib-
utes to all knowledge making.

Looking at the Past

Women have been part of science laboratories in India almost from the
time that science departments were established in universities in the
early part of the twentieth century. As Abha Sur writes in her study of the
women in C.V. Raman’s laboratory, ‘The entry of women scientists in
advanced science was unobtrusive although not uncontested’ (Sur, 2011,
p. 184). The numbers of women have been small, and their survival in
these spaces is not easy. Their presence has not in itself challenged the

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From Numbers to Structures 147

unequal and gendered nature of these spaces. A strange coincidence or

intersection of class, caste, modernity and nationalism allowed this trans-
gression to take place.
In the nationalist movement, there was a strong push for distinguish-
ing women’s education and curriculum on the grounds that women were
biologically different and had different social roles to play. As the section
on women in the 1917 review of Calcutta University says: ‘... suggest a
softer curriculum for women that will allow them to hone their skills of
motherhood and homemaking’ (Sur, 2011, p. 190). But there were also
other voices that emphasised the need for egalitarianism in education.
Significant among these were the women graduates from Bethune
College, the first women’s college in India, founded in 1879, who not
only argued against a separate university for women, fearing that this
would lead to a different curriculum, but also demanded that the college
itself start offering honours degrees in philosophy, economics, history,
mathematics and science subjects like physics and chemistry (Sur, 2011,
p. 191).
The commission’s final recommendations for women’s education, in
the face of these conflicting demands, were mixed and suggested the
following:

z Under the Calcutta University control, a board for Women’s Edu-

cation should be constituted for preparing useful curriculum for
women’s education. Women should be given education in medi-
cine and teachers’ training.
z Co-education should be started in universities and women encour-
aged to benefit themselves by the same.
z For young girls, purdah schools should be opened (Sharma and
Sharma, 2000, p. 136).

Independent India dealt with this issue more clearly. In 1952–53, the
Secondary Education Commission stated:

It will be noticed in this report that no particular chapter has been devoted to
the education of women. The Commission feels that, at the present stage of
our social evolution[,] there is no special justification to deal with women’s
education separately. Every type of education open to men should also be
open to women. ... It is a matter of gratification that many women have joined

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148 Chayanika Shah

the faculties of engineering, agriculture, medicine, veterinary science, com-

merce, law and teaching[,] as well as the arts and science and have taken to
research and some have made their mark in it. (Agrawal and Aggarwal, 1992,
p. 33)

Thus, women had access to all kinds of institutions and to all kinds of
education, at least in principle. Women’s higher education thus tried to
balance the pulls of modernity and gender egalitarianism, on the one
hand, and the social pressures of treating women as mothers and home-
makers, on the other. This resulted in the setting up of special women’s
universities and colleges where women could be sent for education since
parents would not send their daughters to co-education institutions. In
keeping with the suggestions from these very same commissions, while
special courses on home science were developed, efforts were also made
to make other courses similar for men and women.
Interestingly, almost a decade later, the Hansa Mehta Committee on
‘Differentiation of curricula for boys and girls’ used science and its dis-
coveries to make very revolutionary recommendations:

Intensive efforts should be made to educate the public regarding the scien-
tific findings about sex difference and to develop proper attitudes in each sex
towards the other. In particular, the public mind will have to be disabused of
all traditional concepts of the physical and intellectual inferiority of women.
The public in general and the teachers in particular will have to be made to
realise that it is unscientific to divide tasks and subjects on the basis of sex and
to regard some of them as ‘masculine’ and the others as ‘feminine’. Similarly,
the fact that the so-called psychological differences between the two sexes
arise, not out of sex but out of social conditions will have to be widely pub-
licised and made to realise that stereotypes ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ per-
sonalities do more harm than good. (Agrawal and Aggarwal, 1992, p. 44)

In practice, however, things panned out differently. The women’s uni-

versities and colleges concentrated on teaching courses that seemed
socially acceptable at the cost of providing ‘regular’ education to women
students. Other colleges and universities opened themselves to women
and became co-educational institutions, but they essentially remained
men’s colleges opening themselves to women. Home science remained
the domain of women and women’s colleges; it was not accessed by

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 From Numbers to Structures 149

men, and engineering continued to be dominated by men. To understand

this trend, and to substantiate the statement made here, we look at some
of the recent data available.

What Do the Present Figures Say?

The first thing we need to realise is that final numbers make sense only
in the context that the number of people, especially women, in the Indian
situation accessing science education at any level itself is very low. To
begin with, the number of women accessing formal education itself is
70 for men still quite small. According to the 2001 Census, ‘The overall literacy rate
56 for womenworks out to be 64.8 percent, the male literacy rate is 75.3 percent and
(2011) that for females is 53.7 percent, showing a gap of 21.6 percentage points
16 point/% between the sexes at the national level’ (Census Data 2001: Number of
difference literates and literacy levels). Of these, some have had no formal educa-
in 'rural' tion. So almost half the total population of women has had no formal
education at all. This is the first leak in women’s access to science educa-
tion and the beginning of the disparity in access between men and
women.
Further, as one can see from Table 1, the next major leak of girls from
the formal education system takes place during the transition from pri-
mary to middle school. An estimated 56 per cent of girls drop out before
middle school. The corresponding decrease for boys at that level is
50 per cent (Census and you: Literacy and level of education). Middle
school is where science education actually begins. So there is a large
percentage of women (and also men) who are unable to access any sci-
ence education as they do not reach this level of education in the first
place. This is also an important point to note when speaking of the need
to reform science education.
It is important to note that only about 12 per cent of literate women
are accessing education beyond school. The percentages for men are not
very different either. Yet the difference in numbers due to the initial dif-
ference is still quite large.
What is noteworthy is that once in secondary school, the access of
girls in the future to science degrees and postgraduate and doctoral edu-
cation is not much compromised. The percentage of women who access

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150 Chayanika Shah

Table 1. Number and Percentage of Literates by Level of Education: India

2001

Per cent to Literate [sic]

Level of Education Persons Males Females
Literate 100.0 100.0 100.0
Literate without educational level 3.6 3.4 3.9
Below Primary 25.8 24.1 28.4
Primary 26.2 24.8 28.2
Middle 16.1 16.6 15.3
Matriculation/Secondary 14.1 15.2 12.5
High Secondary/Intermediate/Pre-University/ 6.7 7.3 5.9
Senior Secondary
Non-technical/Technical diploma or 0.8 1.0 0.4
certificate not equal to degree
Graduate and above 6.7 7.6 5.4
Source: Census and You: Literacy and level of education.

graduate, postgraduate and doctoral programmes in comparison to the

percentage of men who access these same programmes indicates that
there does not seem to be much of a drop once women get on to pursuing
higher education (Table 2).

Table 2. Proportion of Women Students Level-wise in Higher Education

Year Undergraduate Graduate Research

1991–92 32.6 34.6 37.0
1994–95 33.6 35.6 38.5
1996–97 34.1 34.0 39.2
2000–01 37.5 39.5 36.1
Source: Poonacha and Gopal, 2004, p. 19.

Also, the number of women graduates in science is almost the same

as the average figures for graduates in any other subject or field or dis-
cipline. Indeed, for the year 2000–01, the percentage of women of the
total number of graduates and the percentage of women of the total
number of graduates in science were exactly the same—39.4 per cent
(Indian Academy of Sciences, 2007, p. 7). At the same time, it is crucial
to note that at every stage, there is some difference, usually in favour of
the male population. And so the differential access between men and

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From Numbers to Structures 151

women in higher education introduced in the early years goes on increas-

ing, albeit more slowly. There is no point at which it really decreases.
And signs of this are seen even today. SNDT, the first ever women’s
university in India, set up almost a century ago, has only one course
listed under its faculty of science, and that is a master’s degree in analyti-
cal chemistry.2 A reputed women’s college affiliated to the University of
Mumbai does not offer degrees in the ‘hard’ sciences like physics or
mathematics even today.3 Women do enrol in engineering colleges, and
their numbers are increasing but are far from equal to those of men.

Where are the Women in Science?

While there is an opening out of the sciences in general, the distinct hier-
archy in the natural sciences plays an important role in determining how
open the specific disciplines are. In this globally accepted graded hierar-
chy of science, the physical and mathematical sciences are the ‘Brahmins’.
The hierarchy operates in multiple ways, and we shall talk more about
this later in the article. But a very concrete and clear manifestation of
how this hierarchy organises itself is reflected in the issues of access and
success. It is almost as if access to excelling in science is mainly reserved
for Brahmin males in caste-divided Indian society and for white males
in race-divided countries like the USA. Since we do not have a clear
discipline-wise break-up of the numbers for women’s enrolment in sci-
ence in India, I think it is worthwhile to look at the data from wherever
they might be available before we come back to examine the Indian
scenario.
Concerns about the very bleak figures for various minorities and
women in different science disciplines have been raised for a long time
now, especially in countries like the USA, which have been seeing an
overall decline in enrolment in the sciences. These countries have
adopted programmes to actively increase enrolment and participation,
and although the numbers have increased after the introduction of vari-
ous STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) pro-
grammes, recent figures also show a huge disparity in some fields.
Table 3 indicates the high attrition rates in the numbers of women as they
move from undergraduate to doctoral work.

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152 Chayanika Shah

Table 3. Women Undergraduates and Doctorates in the Sciences in USA

Bachelor’s Doctorates
Degree Earned Earned
Discipline 1966 2006 1966 2006
Biological & Agricultural Sciences 25.0% 59.8% 12.0% 47.9%
Chemistry 18.5% 51.8% 6.1% 34.3%
Mathematics 33.3% 44.9% 6.1% 29.6%
Physics 4.9% 20.7% 1.9% 16.6%
Source: From Figures 6 (p. 9) and 9 (p. 12) in Hill et al., 2010.

Table 3 also shows the extreme variation in numbers within dis-

ciplines. So to understand the significance of the figure of 39.4 per
cent for women science graduates in India, it is important to have such
discipline-segregated numbers. We do not have these numbers in a very
systematic manner thus far, but recent global work done by the American
Institute of Physics has led to some department- and institute-based data
collections for women in physics in India (Bal et al., 2004; Godbole,
2002). As Nutan Chandra et al. (2009) note in their country report on
‘Women in Physics’:

...in contrast to many Western countries where there is a ‘leaky pipeline’ and
the percentage of women drops steadily at every stage, the situation in India
is different: up to the doctoral degree, there is a significant number of women
in science, but there is a precipitous drop at the postdoctoral level. (p. 121)

Further studies of women biologists and their career achievements by

others like Vinita Bal (2004) indicate that women fare much worse than
their male colleagues. First of all, the numbers of women who get jobs as
scientists is rather low: ‘ ...these data suggest that fewer women seem to
be getting permanent jobs even at the lowest rung than the proportions of
potential educationally qualified candidates would lead one to expect’
(p. 3649). More importantly, once in service, women seem to perform
worse on other counts, such as the number of publications, the nature of
awards and grants, and the recognition that accrues from these. ‘Clearly[,]
despite the increase in the number of women scientists in biology,
gender-based disadvantages continue to be the order of the day, even in
academic performance-based competition’ (p. 3652).

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From Numbers to Structures 153

So this has been the specific Indian situation where a major leak takes
place after the attainment of doctorate degrees. Women scientists analys-
ing these absences have located the problem squarely within the domain
of the social (Chandra et al., 2009). They deduce that at the age at which
women finish their education, they face pressure to marry, may need to
relocate after marriage and may have children, and these could be the
reasons why they drop out of science at this stage. ‘In India we have not
a leaky pipeline but a catastrophic postdoctoral outflux! This is largely
due to societal pressure on these women to give up their careers for mar-
riage and motherhood, though discrimination in hiring and other prac-
tices cannot be ruled out’ (p. 121). Keeping this in mind, they have made
some recommendations for relaxation in age when hiring women, the
condoning of gaps in service and also the allowing of flexitime arrange-
ments for women in science.
The pressures in Indian society around marriage and child rearing
have been seen as major reasons for this sudden disappearance of women
as scientists and also for their not being known as scientists. The voices
of women scientists, those who have survived, as documented in
Lilavati’s Daughters, further emphasise the importance of the support of
natal and marital families in the achievement of success (Indian Academy
of Sciences, 2007).

Gender Discrimination within Institutions

A later study titled ‘Trained scientific women power: How much are we
losing and why?’ interviewed women who had dropped out of science
research and men and women who had continued in science. This change
in approach itself led to different conclusions and recommendations:

Important headway can be made by addressing organizational and infrastruc-

tural facilities as well as undertaking policy changes that may be critical to
attract and retain women in Science research. Such changes need to move
beyond the traditional framework that locates societal and family responsi-
bilities as singular factors responsible for women dropping out of Science.
The data has importantly revealed [that] close to 85 percent of the women
who are pursuing active careers in research have competently and in very
different ways balanced families and careers.... Among the largest majority

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154 Chayanika Shah

of those married, never married, with or without children, family and societal
pressures have been a small but significant factor reported for not taking up
the job.... indicating that family and societal pressures cannot explain com-
pletely why women drop out of Science. (Kurup et al., 2010, p. 13)

In keeping with these findings, the recommendations made ask for

gender-neutral facilities and policies from the institutions of scientific
research, which will also eventually ‘lead to maximising the productivity
of the organisation as a whole’ (Kurup et al., 2010, p. 55). These include
‘Provisions of on campus housing, transportation, state of art child care
and elder care facilities as well as professionalized domestic help should
be provided for both women and men faculty at all S&T organizations.’
Other gender-neutral provisions like flexibility in timings and more
opportunities for networking and collaboration are also recommended.
Other recommendations include more specific policy changes such as
policy on transparency in selection and evaluation procedures; policy on
a time-bound target recruiting system that would help all those margin-
alised from and by the recruitment system and policy on bringing about
a level of transparency to the entire (because it is also talking of evalua-
tion and promotions) system. Also included are recommendations espe-
cially to ensure that larger numbers of women are recruited through the
mandatory disclosure of a gender-wise break-up of faculty and students
across departments, the composition of one-third women as members of
all committees and the introduction of long-term schemes for the re-
entry and employment of spouses in the same organisation (pp. 56–57).
It is interesting to note the constant effort to underline the fact that the
changes demanded for taking care of familial responsibilities are, in fact,
important and useful not only for women alone but for male scientists as
well. Also, as science researchers themselves, in a true sense of belong-
ing to the profession, the authors make a call for these changes as reward-
ing for science research in the country on the whole.
At the same time, it is important to note that these recommendations
carefully locate the problem of this massive leak following the acquisi-
tion of a doctoral degree in the gendered nature of the scientific institu-
tions and in their recruitment and employment policies. The problems
noted above would suggest that the situation of women in science is
similar to that in any other demanding profession. If so, this then raises
the question of what is specific to science in all of this.

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From Numbers to Structures 155

First of all, recognition of the fact that there is a gendered bias in the
ways in which recruitment, promotion and other evaluations take place
is itself a very crucial contribution to the understanding of the gendered
character of the scientific establishment. Usually, considerable emphasis
is placed on the merit-based recruitment of people within the science
establishments and the supposedly objective manner in which scientific
contributions are recognised or rewarded. The image of the scientist is
someone who is above petty worldliness, someone who truly respects
only the best in science. It is difficult to conjure a similar image of, say,
a business professional or a manager. A certain unworldliness is ascribed
to the person engaged in the production of knowledge about the natural
world.
Similarly, an objectivity is ascribed to the nature of scientific dis-
covery and to the production of scientific knowledge also, which pre-
sumably cannot allow social biases to play a role. So people’s work has
to be recognised for its inherent merit, and there cannot be any other way
to do this. Yet the ways in which women in science are awarded grants,
awards and promotions show a clear bias operating against them. The
above report (‘Trained scientific women power: How much are we los-
ing and why?’) clearly points out that the fewer instances of women’s
success in science have more to do with the nature of the institution and
less to do with women’s supposedly less engaged or less committed
manner of working as scientists.
Some may say that these are bad institutional practices and that it is
just the general nepotism of government institutions that has rubbed off
on our science establishments. They may even make a case for removing
research institutions from government control. I would argue, however,
that the gendered (read ‘masculine’) character of science institutions
draws from a general masculinisation of every aspect of science itself—
the ways in which it is practised, the ways in which it is taught and the
ways in which knowledge is produced.

Voices from the Margins

First of all, without discounting the existing narratives of women in sci-
ence, there is a need to recognise that speaking of one’s experience in
any discipline is not easy. No scientist would like to be described as a

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156 Chayanika Shah

woman scientist, a black scientist or a dalit scientist for that matter; no

good professional would want to talk of her4 problems, because she
wants to be judged on her work alone, and not the effort she has put in to
be able to reach where she has. When any scientist is judged on factors
external to her actual work, she experiences a sense of betrayal that
seems very individual until it is recognised as something much more
structural and much more systemic.
As noted feminist biologist Evelyn Fox Keller (2001b), writing retro-
spectively about her life in a theoretical physics department, says:

Whatever I said then, and always after, it seemed somehow that I had said
too much. Some of this feeling remains with me even now as I write this
article. It is a consequence of the assumption in the minds of others that what
I am describing must have been a very personal, private experience—
that is[,] somewhere it was produced somehow by forces within myself. It
was not. Although I clearly participated in and necessarily contributed to
these events, they were essentially external in origin. That vital recognition
has taken a long time. With it, my shame began to dissolve, to be replaced by
a sense of personal rage and, finally, a transformation of that rage into some-
thing less personal—something akin to a political conscience. (p. 10)

Talking openly and honestly about one’s experiences is tough, and

thus many such stories lie hidden—unspoken and unvoiced—under the
bright, cheery success stories and the inspirational presentations of
improving statistics. The stories of those who have continued and sur-
vived are crucial for making the journey seem possible to those who are
just starting out, but the work of the women’s movements and the vari-
ous feminisms in the last few decades foregrounds the fact that there is
enough to learn from these hidden narratives, those not voiced or those
that are articulated hesitantly and timidly but with the utmost
‘objectivity’.
The stories of those who did not continue in science research are also
very important. It is a grave presumption to believe that all those who did
not continue in research left because they were not good, or because of
personal reasons (marriage, childrearing, familial responsibilities, not
getting a job in the city of one’s choice, etc.). The stories of those who
did not continue offer many lessons that may help us move beyond the
issue of mere numbers and societal notions of what men and women can

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From Numbers to Structures 157

or should do. The study by Kurup et al. (2010) clearly indicates that col-
lecting these stories is as important as the success stories.

My Journey into Feminism and Science

I am one such person who did not continue to do research in science, and
so am not recognised in the traditional sense as a scientist. I have con-
tinued to teach physics for many years, and alongside carried my science
into my feminism and my feminism into my science in more ways than
one. These seemed very far from each other when I began my postdoc-
toral journey. I had a nascent understanding of both feminism and sci-
ence at that time. Feminism seemed to be only about women’s rights, as
I came to it from the street activism of the early 1980s. And science
research seemed to be only what happened in the laboratory, or with
algebraic equations and in the library or in the computer room as in my
case. Over the years, I have gained a different understanding of both.
Feminism lured every aspect of life with its epistemological promise.
Discovering the body meant gaining new insights into an understanding
of the self, as being ‘women’ gave a new understanding of enculturation.
Campaigns against the horrid violence of rape and domestic violence
gave new understandings of both power and family. Probing ideas about
women and work, seeing the reduced numbers of women in the organ-
ised workforce and the declining organised workforce on the whole, pro-
vided a different understanding of the private and domestic, as well as of
the ‘feminisation’ of poverty and the ‘masculinisation’ of the public.
In recent years, encounters with sex work and surrogacy have led to a
new analysis of capital, labour and globalisation, while also sharpening
the notion of individual choice in the face of restrictive structures.
Struggles with (and at) the intersecting axes of caste, class, gender, dis-
ability and other forms of marginalisation have led to a newer under-
standing of gender. The journeys we take—both as individuals and as
part of a collective—in understanding the construction of the very onto-
logical category of sex have made it mandatory to revisit our feminisms.
Our feminisms have taught us the value of the reflexive practice of
everything, and the limits of what is seen and understood against the
unseen and the oft negated.

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158 Chayanika Shah

Through this journey, my understanding of science and education also

underwent scrutiny. I carried my understanding and tools of feminism to
my training, to my teaching, to my involvement with the movement for
the popularisation of science and innovation in science education, to the
process of the creation of scientific knowledge and to the discovery of
knowledge itself. Some of these journeys were made in isolation, others
in collaboration, both drawing alike from the collective wisdom engen-
dered through our political interventions and through the academic work
done by others.

The ‘Male’ Institute

Articulations of feminists who, like me, had quit science and had veered
towards feminist studies made me take another look at my own experi-
ence. It took many years for me to be able to achieve even this distanced
articulation of being a woman in a male-dominated institute that trained
people in male-dominated fields. When the numbers of one’s own kind
are not enough, the experience of learning is a tough one.

I studied Physics and was not directly stopped by anybody from doing so.
I do remember in hindsight an undisputed notion amongst people around me
on how engineering was not a good choice for girls... There was also a gen-
eral sense of disbelief that I would choose to try for the JEE way back in
the 70s... No one says anything clearly but the surprise in people’s voices
is indicative of the unusualness of the choice... I do join later for a master’s
degree and find myself in a campus where we (the ‘ladies’) are 70 in a total
student strength of 3000... The common joke we hear is that there are three
sexes—the male, the female and the IIT female.
Almost three decades later in 2011 I read an article in a newspaper on ‘Women
at IIT an endangered species’ where the reporter reports on the woefully small
proportion of women students and the harassment that they face. Incidentally
one of the women students is quoted as saying, ‘Guys do not call us females.
They call us non males.’ My heart skips a beat. So nothing has changed! And
then I continue to read the comments.... There is a flurry of mails from the
‘males’.
‘iit gals really become frustrated during the time of moodi every year at iitb.
coz no 1 pays much attention to them as they r really, we can say nonmales’;

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From Numbers to Structures 159

‘i think this is the most one sided jou[r]nalism show by TOI they havent
shown the photographs of the girls whose comments they have taken. If they
would have shown the phot[o]graphs then people would have got why they
are called nonmales rather than females.’
‘Kindly avoid such articles which could fuel an awaiting mahila-sangh to
demand reservations to girls in IITs as well. I still remember the gruelling
hardwork one has to put in preparing for IITJEE. Several girls backout for the
very same reason (hence the skewed ratio).’5
Am I over reading? Am I giving undue credence to the voices of a bigoted
few?... My honest answer is that those who stood by us and were friends
and comrades were an exception. This was the overall tone and tenor.... The
silence we have left untouched all these years. How could we speak? We just
wanted to be students like them, we did not want to stand out and be different
in any way. The perfect conundrum of the outsider....

‘IIT males’ are no special species endowed with a higher or lower

degree of understanding. At best, they may be accused of a high degree
of arrogance, which makes them say even politically incorrect things,
and so in a way they are probably able to tread where others dare not.
There is a common understanding shared by society, from its ‘creamy’
layer at the top all the way to the bottom, that science (especially the hard
sciences that are taught at institutes of technology) and science institutes
are male domains in general, and Brahmin male domains in particular.
Without digressing much further, it is critical to emphasise that recent
reports of suicides by dalit students in these institutes of excellence
reveal much about the fate of many of these students who gain admission
due to sheer perseverance and hard work, but have a tough time surviv-
ing the very casteist nature of these institutions.6 A fallout of the sexist
bias is that those ‘non-males’ who manage to get in and/or stay there are
anomalies and can stereotypically never be ‘female’ or ‘women’. The
fact of the matter is that there is a strong belief that science is for men, is
male or can be only masculine. Perhaps the 10-year-old nephew also
grasped this reality because this is the perspective that the world has.
This is what all of us who venture in also fight against, but without
speaking openly about it. We are the tough ones, the ones who wish to
survive with no concessions. The advantages of class and caste help us
through. We also shed our femininity, surround ourselves with an ‘I don’t
care’ armour and squash all apprehension about the treatment we were

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160 Chayanika Shah

getting with self-doubt. ‘Perhaps I was not good enough’ is a thought that
crossed my mind very often until I heard others speak of the forced invis-
ibility of women in science.
One of the most telling accounts of this phenomenon is that of Ben
Barres, a female-to-male transgendered person. He wrote in response to
what he calls the ‘Larry Summers hypothesis’.7 Discussing the changes
he experienced post his transition, he writes: ‘By far, the main difference
that I have noticed is that people who don’t know I am transgendered
treat me with much more respect: I can even complete a whole sentence
without being interrupted by a man’ (Barres, 2006, p. 135). A friend
referred to Ben Barres’s life experiences of the same person living parts
of their life in two different genders as the most controlled experiment.
Ben Barres’s revealing narrative underlines the fact that success and rec-
ognition in science have more to do with factors other than mere ability.

As an undergrad at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), I was

the only person in a large class of nearly all men to solve a hard maths pro-
blem, only to be told by the professor that my boyfriend must have solved it
for me. I was not given any credit. I am still disappointed about the prestig-
ious fellowship competition I later lost to a male contemporary when I was a
PhD student, even though the Harvard dean who had read both applications
assured me that my application was much stronger (I had published six high-
impact papers whereas my male competitor had published only one). Shortly
after I changed sex, a faculty member was heard to say ‘Ben Barres gave
a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister’s’.
(p. 134)

Over time, similar voices of women in science, and particularly those

identifying with feminism (Evelyn Fox Keller, Banu Subramaniam,
Evelyn Hammonds), have added nuance to the question of why there are
such few women in science. The pipeline does leak and is not able to
keep the women in. But there are other crucial questions that also need
to be asked. In Banu Subramaniam’s words, the worry truly is:

‘Where is this pipeline coming from?’ and ‘Where is it going to?’ ‘Who laid
these pipes?’ ‘How is it embedded in global capitalism?’ ‘Who are we pro-
ducing for what purpose?’ ‘Why are we so invested in shoving all these young
girls and women into the pipeline that is dark and dingy and not very habit-
able?’ So while those working on gender equity are working on the access
of everyone into those pipes, others are questioning the whole idea of that

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From Numbers to Structures 161

metaphor and its underlying conception of science and asking whether our
project should be about getting more women into the pipeline or dismantling
the pipeline. (Hammonds and Subramaniam, 2003, p. 939)

Parallel Universes
As I look back at my life, I realise that the reason I left research in sci-
ence had less to do with feeling like an anomaly in physics (I had made
my peace with that) and had more to do with the fact that my world of
research and the real world did not seem to have anything in common.
Nevertheless, my love of science led me to undertake various experi-
ments and engagements that tried to bring science and society together.
I was drawn to the people’s science movements (PSM), which were at
their peak in the early 1980s. A belief in the modernist promise of
progress and development guided the efforts of the PSM to popularise
science and make it accessible to all. Hence, countering age-old beliefs
and superstitions with ‘scientific’ and rational explanations was also an
important part of the work. Incidents like the Bhopal gas tragedy and the
Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster were seen as accidents by some. For
others like me, they also raised questions about the notions of progress
and development, and opened up new fields of engagement and thinking.
The Narmada Bachao Andolan with its slogan of ‘vinaash nahin vikas
chahiye’ [We don’t want destruction. We want progress.] gave a new
outlook and a different paradigm for understanding development. While
post-colonial critics like Ashis Nandy (1989) questioned the hegemony
of modern science, feminist thinkers like Vandana Shiva (1991) pointed
to the inherently violent nature of modern science itself.
Alongside these activities, my increasing involvement with the vibrant
women’s health movements of the late 1980s also opened up a new ave-
nue for me to enter the arena of science and technology. Investigating
modern medicine and reproductive technologies that wreaked havoc
with women’s health under the garb of providing relief and responding
to their demand for effective birth control methods led us to question
development and political economy from another location of interna-
tional politics of population control.
Opposition to long-acting, systemic, provider-controlled contra-
ceptive methods like hormonal injectables and implants began with

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162 Chayanika Shah

specifics. It began with the way in which trials were being conducted, the
lack of informed consent of the participants in the trial, the fudging of
data, and the misreporting of facts that happened at each and every stage.
We were part of a movement that started at the local level but engaged in
a global campaign. The ‘anti-fertility vaccines’ were the epitome of a
series of hazardous provider-controlled contraceptives made available
by international population control agencies, pharmaceutical companies
and medical practitioners. From each of their perspectives, the vaccines
denoted the pinnacle of scientific growth and progress. From our loca-
tion, this was science gone awry, making weapons of population control
under the garb of contraception.

The response of [the] women’s health movement to the development of such

contraceptives was a demand calling for a halt to all research on the anti-
fertility vaccines all over the world.... The major ground was that we did not
see any reason to carry out research on such contraceptive methods. This
demand has raised a lot of hue and cry. We are being termed eccentrics and
anti-progress and anti-science.... we are also saying it from the standpoint that
we are achieving a clarity as to the kind of methods that we want. Listening
to our bodies, listening to our own experiences and considering women to be
rational human beings has given us the clarity also to articulate what we do
mean by contraception. (Manorama and Shah, 1996, p. WS-37)

We were making new connections. We had moved beyond the lan-

guage of misuse of science. The overuse of reductionism in methods of
science; the subjectivity in the ways in which women, their bodies and
their needs were looked at; the understanding of contraception that sci-
ence employed, all of these indicated to us the problematic nature of sci-
ence itself. Progress in science was seen as firmly embedded in the
social, cultural and political milieu. It was difficult to see science as
merely an objective, value-free enterprise. Big science and present-day
science could not be seen as neutral from any angle.

Feminist Critiques of Science

From here it is a small step to ask, like Keller did:

How is it that thinking ‘objectively’, that is, thinking that is defined as self-
detached, impersonal, and transcendent, is also understood as ‘thinking like

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From Numbers to Structures 163

a man’?... What difference—for science now rather than for women—might

such an equation have made?... In short, what particular cultural norms
and values has the language of gender carried into science, and how have
these norms and values contributed to its shape and growth? (Keller, 2001a,
p. 134)

The method of science and the knowledge thus produced are as much
a part of the dominant values and politics of our society as anything else.
The purity of the enterprise and the transparency of the mirror it claims
to hold to nature are myths that are created by the dominant, and this
knowledge of the natural world is as much a cultural construct as any
other human enterprise. There is no separation of science and politics. As
Sandra Harding observes, ‘it takes both science and politics to see the
world “behind,” “beneath,” or “from outside” the oppressors’ institution-
alized vision.... All understanding is socially local, or situated’ (Harding,
2008, p. 120).
In keeping with the fact that all knowledge is located, Harding actively
advocates for standpoint theories. As she writes:

...a standpoint is an achievement, not an ascription; and it is a group achieve-

ment, not something an individual can achieve apart from an emancipatory
social movement or context. Women do not automatically have access to a
standpoint of women or a feminist standpoint. Such a standpoint must be
struggled for against the apparent realities made to appear natural and obvi-
ous by dominant institutions, and against the ongoing political disempower-
ment of oppressed groups. (Harding, 2008, p. 120)

It is important that we all state where we are located in our attempts

to create a discourse that is strongly objective. This is in contrast to the
dominant prevalent notion that privileges those in power as objective
and regards all else as subjective interpretations. These and similar such
ideas have created a new field of enquiry called the Feminist Science
Studies for which Mayberry et al. (2001) offer a wonderful comprehen-
sive etymology:

FEMINIST SCIENCE STUDIES (fem’anist si’ens stud’ez) 1. A field under

construction. 2. A body of work that applies feminist analysis to scientific
ideas and practices to explore the relationship between feminism and science
and what each can learn from the other. 3. A field that explores the intersec-
tions between race, class, gender, and science and technology. 4. The effort

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164 Chayanika Shah

to work out the implications of ‘situated knowledges’ (knowledge seen as a

social activity embedded in a certain culture and world view). 5. A scholar-
ship in which ‘gender politics are not simply about relationships about men
and women but are focussed precisely on how to understand agency, body,
rationality, and the boundaries between nature and culture’ (Rousse 1996). A
disruption of the dichotomy between scientific enquiry and policy through
examination of the connections between scientific knowledge and scientific
practices. (p. 5)

Teaching Science

Feminist Science Studies was a new field of enquiry. Here were ideas for
which no training in science that I or others around me had undergone
had prepared us. Indeed, the regular education that we all received made
sure to communicate science to us as a finished product supposedly
arrived at through a strong adherence to a ‘scientific method’ that was
objective and value neutral. Knowledge created by science was seen as
being independent of the scientist. The only scientists’ lives and histories
of science that we were taught were those of the giants of science, the
heroes and the geniuses. Without actually talking about the ways in
which scientific knowledge was produced, there was nevertheless a clear
communication of a ‘scientistic’ understanding of science—which means
a dogmatic embrace of scientific methodology and the reduction of all
knowledge to only that which is measurable.
And this brings me to the second track in my life, that of my engage-
ment with science education. From the mid-1980s to almost three years
ago, I taught physics in a college. We used the ‘chalk and talk method’ to
talk about complicated physics ideas to a group of students who were
definitely not going to continue with a master’s in physics, for whom
coming to the study of physics was rarely a matter of individual choice,
and mostly a matter of strange accidents. Our courses were geared
towards the students moving on to becoming physicists. In the process,
our students neither learnt physics nor did they learn about physics. Over
the years, my colleagues and I made some attempts to at least make this
learning more than just rote learning, but our efforts were too few and far
between to have any lasting impact on the system.

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From Numbers to Structures 165

I also became involved a little bit with the innovative Hoshangabad

Science Teaching Programme (HSTP) run in the middle schools of
Madhya Pradesh. In the HSTP, there was a collective effort to make sci-
ence more accessible, more understandable and more fun. Pedagogy was
only one part—but an essential component—of an overall programme of
innovation introduced in government school education. The emphasis
was on fostering an enquiry-centred teaching–learning method. So while
the value of the programme was in the overall achievement of making a
political and radical change at the level of the regular school classroom,
teachers and students, the method used did not really question science, or
its knowledge, processes or producers. In the late 1970s and early 1980s
when the HSTP programme was launched, these debates on science had
probably just about begun.
In general, within education there is a constant debate as to what
knowledge is qualified to be included in the curriculum. There has been
an emphasis on acceptability and completeness. In science education, in
particular, with its positivist stance, the emphasis is on knowledge that is
seen to be complete. The positivists draw a sharp distinction between the
‘context of discovery’ and the ‘context of justification’. As Samir Okasha
explains:

The context of discovery refers to the actual historical process by which a sci-
entist arrives at a given theory. The context of justification refers to the means
by which the scientist tries to justify the theory once it is already there—which
includes testing the theory, searching for relevant evidence, and so on. The
positivists believed that the former was a subjective, psychological process
that wasn’t governed by precise rules, while the latter was an objective matter
of logic. (Okasha, 2002, p. 79)

What is traditionally taught in classrooms is ‘readymade science’ and

not ‘science in the making’. What is presented to the students and learn-
ers of science is the final result, packaged in a manner that obliterates the
socio-cultural moorings of this knowledge production and that of its pro-
ducers. Even in this telling, the method is foregrounded in a manner that
makes all discoveries appear as part of some linear narrative of the good
and objective application of the scientific method. Even drastic shifts in
paradigms are explained as far as possible by this pure application of
method, and when that is not possible, through the subjective process
ascribed only to the genius of the masters.

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166 Chayanika Shah

This neat telling of the progress of scientific knowledge has been rup-
tured by various science studies scholars from disciplines as varied as
history, philosophy and sociology of science, and post-colonial studies in
the last three to four decades. These scholars have together created an
impressive body of work that challenges the very basis of the way in
which we understand, teach and learn science. Feminist studies of sci-
ence make an additional contribution to the vast arena of science studies
that speak of the ‘nature of science’. As Harding says, it is, in fact, a cru-
cial internalist critique.

FSS intends to be part of the culture of the sciences themselves rather than
only an external criticism or analysis of it, in contrast to the way both con-
ventional philosophies of science and the sociology of scientific knowledge
conceptualize their projects. Thus FSS intends to change scientific practice
itself and to contribute to the transformation of the sciences. (Harding, 2008,
p. 124)

With these robust critiques of science, there is now increasing empha-

sis on making this contextualised view of science a part of science edu-
cation. In the last two decades, an agreement has almost been reached on
the teaching of the ‘nature of science’ in science courses (Driver et al.,
1996; Elkana, 2000; Matthews, 1998, to name a few). Scientific know-
ledge, like all other knowledges, is perceived as being embedded in its
context, and the process of its production is seen as important for under-
standing it as the finished product.
Hence, the issues in science education today are not only about how
to teach in the classroom and how to understand how children learn
but also about what it is that we wish to teach as science and about its
methods, its processes, its practices, its exclusions and its achievements.
So I come to the second incident that I had mentioned at the beginning of
this article. If the practice of science is ‘masculine’ or gendered to pri-
vilege some ways of doing things, then why should a course on science
education not have feminism?

So Where is the Gender in Boyle’s Law?8

That brings me to my last point, which is hidden in the rhetorical ques-
tion asked above. Biology, medicine, primatology, psychology and other

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From Numbers to Structures 167

such disciplines keep throwing up various kinds of examples of the gen-

der bias found in the ways in which the problems are framed, the ques-
tions are asked, the experiments are performed and the analysis is done.
There are also many examples of the gendered nature of the knowledge
produced. The subjective and gendered bias of the researchers in these
fields is easy to ascertain because they directly deal with the way in
which we understand gender in society as being masculine and/or femi-
nine. Hence, seeing the feminist intervention in the teaching of biology
is easier to comprehend.
The question thrown at most feminist scholars is really this: ‘So what
is the gendered nature of physics and what is its treatment of the inani-
mate material world?’ The answer is not straightforward, but is inherent
to the understanding of gender and patriarchy itself. In my view, the fact
that we teach science as an enculturated body of knowledge, that we
make the learning of science—the learning of its process and not only its
product—and that we see science as knowledge that is inseparable from
the process of making it are in themselves bringing a gendered under-
standing to the whole business of science education.
As Douglas Allchin says:

A gendered view of science differs markedly from one that considers science
transcendental, or universal, and hence gender neutral.... Thus, one of my
early aims is to show how Boyle’s law is not universal, but contingent and
contextual. (Allchin, 2011, p. 2)

And finally he ends with:

When one teaches Boyle’s law as unqualified, and embedded in a reductionis-

tic view of causality and law-like natural order, one teaches that nature is sim-
ple and rule-bound.... Boyle’s law also teaches, by example, that science is a
simple meritocracy, resulting from the work of special individuals (geniuses,
perhaps, like Newton or Einstein).... the images and concepts of simplicity
inherent in the canonical Boyle’s law shape public knowledge. Someone
indoctrinated into simple science is unprepared to appreciate or interpret
the complexity in science on occasions when it informs important public or
private decision-making (say, in cases of climate change or nuclear waste).
In addition, those schooled to expect simple science and mathematical-type
certainty are easily betrayed when claims (at first advanced without context)

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168 Chayanika Shah

prove false. Science suffers a disillusioned public, which then fails to respect
scientific knowledge when it matters. (p. 31)

Breaking down the objective, detached, neutral method into its real
practised self is what makes for a feminist science education. Some
might call it good science education. I would borrow from Anne Fausto-
Sterling who makes a strong case for feminist science as against merely
good science:

Feminism provided that new vision, allowing many scientists—even those

who do not consider themselves political feminists—to move in a new direc-
tion.... Good science can prevail only when the social and political atmos-
phere offers it space to grow and develop. (Fausto-Sterling, 1992, p. 213)

This, then, is my personal and also our collective journey in the field
of ‘gender and science education’, extending from getting women into
science to adopting a feminist science education. This shift will benefit
not only all the women who are already in science and those many others
who aspire to be there, but also the very cause of science education itself,
as it holds the promise of a more relevant and much needed education for
all. This will result in a more informed public that benefits from under-
standing the nuances and complexities of science and a more sensitised
scientific community that takes this discipline to newer depths while
recognising the limits and possibilities of partial visions instead of sup-
posedly enlightened certainties.

Notes
1. This is an optional course on ‘Science Education’ offered for the M.A.
(Elementary Education) programme at the Tata Institute of Social Science,
Mumbai, and has been co-taught by me since the academic year 2007–08.
2. This information is as per the information on different faculties given on
the SNDT Women’s University website at http://sndt.digitaluniversity.ac/
Content.aspx?ID=703
3. I refer here to Sophia College for Women, which is affiliated to the University
of Mumbai.
4. The female pronoun here and elsewhere is used as a generic pronoun unless
otherwise specified or contextualised. The use of the male pronoun anywhere
is, however, very specific.

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From Numbers to Structures 169

5. I quote the comments as they appear on the website, which can be accessed at
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2005-12-30/india/27865453_1_
iits-engineering-student-indian-institute
6. Many blogs and other Internet sites have recorded these over the last few years.
Some of these are portals of Dalit and Adivasi students at http://scststudents.
org/; Facebook pages like Dalit Feminism at http://www.facebook.com/
group.php?gid=146701256883 and even documentaries such as ‘Death of
Merit’, which are also accessible at some of these sites.
7. In 2005, Harvard University President, Larry Summers, suggested that differ-
ences in innate aptitude rather than discrimination were more likely to be
responsible for the failure of women to advance in their scientific careers.
8. Subtitle courtesy Elizabeth Potter and Douglas Allchin.

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172 Editor’s Introduction