BMC’s first woman director, Archana Achrekar builds an inclusive legacy

by with 32 Comments Stories 2022

Posted on 12th September 2022

BMC's first woman director, Archana Achrekar builds an inclusive legacy

By Poorvi Gupta

From delayed promotions to men who refused to take orders, Archana Achrekar has fought several gender biases and paved the way for more women employees at Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation

Since 1888, the year when BMC was founded, no woman engineer had been appointed as director. Achrekar’s post comes third in the municipal administration hierarchy, after the commissioner and the additional municipal commissioner.

Women civil engineers were a rare sight in the country when Archana Achrekar joined the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) in 1984. Though India got its first female civil engineer in Shakuntala Bhagat almost 30 years prior, things were seldom rosy for Achrekar.

Achrekar landed the appointment in 2020 and proved her mettle despite the roadblocks set by COVID-19.

When she landed the appointment in June 2020, Achrekar (60) was the first woman to head the Engineering Services and Projects section at the BMC, in the 132 years of its existence. However, her path was strewn with obstacles: delayed promotions, a misogynistic work atmosphere and restricted access to the field, among other things.

Achrekar studied at Mumbai-based Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute, the same college from where Bhagat graduated in 1953.

At college, boys would taunt me saying I was wasting a seat. They thought my civil engineering degree was useless as women typically stop going to work after marriage," Achrekar told 101Reporters. 

However, she knew how passionate she was about engineering. The aspects of design and fieldwork that she learnt in her final year consultancy project at M/s Gadiyali and Rawal Consulting Engineers truly solidified her passion for civil engineering. That lit a fire in her belly, which she continued to carry with her until her retirement in September last year.

From desk job to fieldwork

Fieldwork was a part of her consultant job. At the BMC, however, Achrekar had to wait for two years to get her first project. “Back then, women working as field engineers were frowned upon. Therefore, I was assigned a desk job. I was the only woman in meetings; my peers would not take me seriously or hear my project views. But I persisted and got my first fieldwork project in the sewerage department. I wanted to do technical work, and not a desk job of making reports,” exclaimed Achrekar.  

However, things were not any better on the field either. Achrekar recalled how the men in the team would often stare at her as if they were wondering why she was there at all! “Those days, the BMC hardly welcomed women engineers. They were far more present in administrative services than in engineering services,” Achrekar said.

In the early 2000s, Achrekar had a woman colleague running for a prime engineering position at the BMC. Unfortunately, she was not selected, which discouraged that woman to such an extent that she took voluntary retirement.

Watching her quit, similar thoughts crossed Achrekar’s mind as well. Instead of quitting, she decided to share experiences of gender-based microaggressions at the workplace with her female peers in both government and private sector organisations. This helped her feel a sense of solidarity, which boosted her resolve to persist and thrive.

Archana had been the chief engineer of BMC’s city engineer department

Achrekar celebrates Independence Day 2022, proud as she has created a legacy of inclusive municipal corporations.

Over the years, Achrekar has managed several BMC projects, the most significant being the AK Vaidya Olympic-sized swimming pool at Chembur and Ramdev Peer Mandir Marg at Kurla. She also built the staff quarters for solid waste management labourers at Kandivali. She was part of the planning team for the redevelopment of Crawford Market and overlooked the concretisation of parts of arterial roads such as LBS Marg, VN Purav Marg and Ghatkopar-Mankhurd Marg.

No longer a man's world

Twelve years after joining the BMC, Achrekar got her first promotion in 1996. There were no women civil engineers with her level of experience. Men around her were not used to having female bosses. Even her male juniors found it challenging to take instructions from her!

When promoted as Deputy Chief Engineer in 2012, she got her own cabin with an attached washroom. “It was a newly constructed office. However, the washroom had a urinal suitable only for men! It was quite clear that the office was built with the perception that only men would take up that position,” Achrekar said. 

Not just the office infrastructure, even the policies were designed to keep women away from long-lasting careers. Achrekar recalled that when she gave birth to her sons, only a three-month pregnancy leave was allowed at the BMC. No childcare leave or childcare centres for working women were present. As a result, she relied on her mother-in-law to raise her children.

"I somehow managed, just like other women from that time. It is a good thing that women now get maternity leave for six months, besides childcare services. It allows them to balance both work and personal life, instead of struggling in both," Achrekar added.

A study by Sukhatme and Dr Bharati Parikh at IIT Bombay has observed a positive trend of increased female enrolment in engineering colleges in the 1990s, though with a decreased rate of employment. Women engineers in the workforce went from 69% in the 1980s to 55% in the 1990s. 

Achrekar, however, noted that women’s participation in the workforce increased in the mid-2000s.

According to the Engineering Workforce Commission, in 2010, women received 19.7% of all civil engineering degrees awarded, as against the 18.2% in all engineering streams. Moreover, as per a report on women workers in India by the Neville Wadia Institute of Management Studies and Research, the increase in work opportunities in the early years of the new millennium has been to the tune of 9.3 million jobs per annum (from 1999-2000 to 2004-05). Of the total 46 million jobs created during this period, nearly 15 million went to women.

‘A change in mindset came about when the BMC promoted some women in mechanical and electrical engineering to mid-level posts and also started recruiting more women. Today, I see many women civil engineers, working shoulder to shoulder with men. In fact, women engineers have shown how intelligent, dedicated and dependable they are,” said Achrekar. 

A Women’s Day celebration at Archana Achrekar’s office.

Ridhi Gurav (centre), one of Achrekar’s mentees, stands tall with her leader.

In mentor’s role

Achrekar’s journey and passion have inspired many women to enter the field. One of her mentees, Ridhi Gurav (32), a Sub-engineer (Civil) at the BMC, said Achrekar was a supportive superior who helped evoke a strong sense of self-actualisation.

I recently cleared the Maharashtra Public Service Commission exam for recruitment to the post of assistant commissioner in the BMC, and she was the one who asked me every day what all and how much I had studied. Whenever I felt low, she guided me," said Gurav, who worked with Achrekar at the Civic Training Institute & Research Centre. 

Abhay Sabnis, Deputy Chief Engineer at the BMC, worked with Achrekar for two tenures, when she was a chief engineer and when she became the director. “She has been a kind and generous boss, who likes to play on people’s strengths. She never let her team members face brickbats,” Sabnis told 101Reporters. 

“She has certainly left a positive mark as a director who could make everyone feel at ease. Her achievement has opened the gates for women engineers. Today, they prefer to take up fieldwork more. This has only been made possible because of the consistent efforts of engineers like Achrekar, who never shied away from field projects.”

“Her peers saw history being created with her appointment, and now we see more women being promoted to leadership positions in the civic body,” Sabnis added.

Achrekar with her parents and sister
Achrekar with her parents and sister
The Duo: Achrekar at Khardungla with her sister
The Duo: Achrekar at Khardungla with her sister
With mother Sadhana Vaidya, when Achrekar was a kid.
With mother Sadhana Vaidya, when Achrekar was a kid.

The sky is everyone’s laboratory

by with No Comment Stories 2022

Posted on 5th September 2022

The sky is everyone’s laboratory

By Priyamvada Kowshik

Astrophysicist Prajval Shastri is equally preoccupied with her efforts to make the discipline of physics more inclusive, as she is with her studies on black holes

Prajval Shastri was not even seven when she set her heart on space exploration. Humans were yet to land on the moon, as Shastri told her mother about her plans to be a scientist on a spaceship. 

Prof Prajval Shastri was born to parents who were science buffs. Hence, gravitating towards science came easy to her.

I remember being disappointed to learn that. A couple of years later, when the moon-landing finally happened in 1969, we listened to the live stream on All India Radio. That was an era when scientific discussions were as much part of our living rooms as they were in our classrooms," recalls Professor Shastri (63), Emeritus Scientist at the Raman Research Institute, Bengaluru.

One of the foremost astrophysicists in the country, Prof Shastri specialises in supermassive black holes at the centre of distant galaxies and the jet streams emerging from them.

She is equally passionate about dismantling the patriarchy in science, and the inequities and systemic barriers for women in physics. Shastri wants to build an inclusive physics community, where people of all backgrounds can thrive. 

Women in science represent an important societal intersection and among the sciences, physics has one of the largest gender gaps among science disciplines. To address this inequity, Prof Shastri founded and chaired the Gender in Physics Working Group (GIPWG) of the Indian Physics Association (IPA). She also conceived and led the drafting of the Hyderabad Charter for Gender Equity in Physics, a call to action to the Indian physics community to address gender disparity. 

A detested tag: Woman first, scientist later

Shastri’s physics education started purely out of a passion for science. She was born a year after the Sputnik launch; her father was a practicing medical doctor, and her mother a science buff. 

An education at St Agnes College in Mangaluru nurtured her scientific spirit, but it did not give her any inkling of the gender inequities in her chosen discipline. “In school, our science and mathematics teachers were women; in college, it was an equal mix. I saw education as a gender-equal space. I knew about caste, class and gender inequities in the outside society, but I had not yet awakened to the systemic inequities within education, especially physics,” she tells 101Reporters.  

That was until she joined IIT Bombay for her master’s programme. “We were 80 females amid 2,000 male students across all streams. And that is the first time I encountered remarks like ‘Oh, girls do well because they are bookish… girls are not bright’,” she recalls.

One incident that impacted her was when she scored higher than her male lab partner. “I was told I got a higher grade because I am a girl. It was demoralising, and I could not process it initially, despite being a fairly politicised person. I read history and philosophy, in addition to science, and was very much alive to what was happening around me,” says Shastri.

Prof Shastri has held post-doctoral research positions at the University of Texas at Austin, University of California at Berkeley and the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics.

A preparatory workshop for the Transit of Venus 2012 that Prof Shastri organised at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics. She is seen here with Arvind Paranjape, current director of the Mumbai Planetarium.

During her PhD studies at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, the experience of inequality “was up by a couple of notches”. “Our identities were first defined as women, not as passionate science scholars,” Shastri says candidly. 

In 1992, while pursuing her postdoctoral research in the US, the landmark Baltimore Charter for Women in Astronomy — which addressed the need to develop a scientific culture within which both women and men can work equally and effectively — was held. 

“That opened my eyes to how the inequity we experience results from a systemic phenomenon of patriarchy within the sciences. Patriarchy associates science with brilliance and tells you that women are not as brilliant as men. Women also internalise these stereotypes. So the general perception is that science gets more challenging for women as they progress to higher education and research. However, they don’t discuss the barriers and biases within. No study has found a productivity or competence deficit in women. On the contrary, stereotypes and barriers have been identified,” Shastri reveals.  

In the hiring process, these biases “unconsciously” put women candidates at a disadvantage. “When a woman applies for a faculty position, instead of simply looking at her academic track record, teaching experience, research and recommendations, the hiring committees start to second guess if she is married, will she do so, will she relocate, get pregnant, or will we lose her for a year for maternity leave,” Shastri elaborates. 

Branding as incompetent

“If you’re talking about inequity, you must be an incompetent scientist.” This deep-rooted bias was quite evident to Shastri ever since she returned to India in 1995, as a faculty member at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru. It took her more than a decade to publicly voice her views.

In 2008, the conversation around gender inequity in physics and its impact on scientific productivity and excellence gathered momentum. To celebrate 400 years of Galileo’s discovery, 2009 was declared the International Year of Astronomy by the United Nations. The powerful motto, ‘She is an Astronomer’, centred around the gender issue in astrophysics. The IIA was a focal point for these activities in the country, with Shastri in the lead.   

The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP), a global union of professional physicists, has a working group for Women in Physics (Shastri prefers the more inclusive term ‘Gender in Physics’). It organises international conferences every three years where, alongside cutting-edge research, interactive workshops on addressing gender inequities are held. The country teams are responsible for keeping the discourse alive within the physics community. In 2011, Shastri joined her colleagues who were involved with the IUPAP and started speaking up about the inequities in scientific forums.

"When I attended the 2011 conference as India's team leader, I realised that we did not have a forum or society to discuss these recommendations," says Shastri, while elaborating on how she proposed (in 2011) and eventually led the GIPWG in 2017. 

Women and people of marginalised social identities in science widely report that raising issues of inequity leads to their core academic work being undervalued. “Forget about talking of equity in science; even if I am involved in science outreach activities, I have to work harder at my research to not be called incompetent,” says Shastri. Her research papers not only deal with the black hole-galaxy connection, but also gender inequity. She addresses issues such as science communication in regional languages as well.

Shastri rightly emphasises the need for a course on the social processes in science practice, as a part of the graduate physics curriculum.

She believes that the cultivation of scientific thinking is for everyone, uses astrophysics as a vehicle to engage lay audiences of all ages with these questions, and works for the Peoples Science Movement towards this goal.

Prof Shastri has been a Fulbright fellow at Stanford University and is currently an Emeritus Scientist at the Raman Research Institute and Adjunct Professor at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, Australia.

Posing tough questions

It was from multiple academic discussions of the GIPWG that the Hyderabad Charter emerged. ‘Pressing for Progress’, an interdisciplinary three-day conference, was held at Hyderabad University in September 2019, bringing together both scientists and social scientists. Apart from the workshops on the latest research in physics, sociological discussions and innovative theatre methodologies were used to explore issues of gender inequity.

The guiding principle of the Hyderabad Charter is that inequity results from patriarchy, both social and within the sciences. The charter noted: “The fraction of women with PhDs in physics, who are employed in tertiary education countrywide, is just 20%, far less than in biology. That fraction plummets to 10% and lowers in elite research institutions, leadership positions, and honours lists. The low fraction cannot be explained as a lack of interest in physics among girls — they win almost 50% of the INSPIRE fellowships in physics.” 

Some call it the “leaky pipeline”, but Shastri dismisses the metaphor. “It is a matter of the barriers getting bigger as women progress in their scientific studies,” she says.

The Hyderabad Charter calls for higher education and research institutions to have transparent criteria for hiring, the absence of which lands up being discriminatory towards women and minorities. Some key recommendations are: excluding the status/position or background of the spouse when assessing merit, encouraging work-life balance policies, including gender-neutral childcare leave, investing in diversity officers in committees  for selection, hiring, promotion, and research funding, etc. It notes that the commitment of institutional leaders is key to making progress.

Prof Prajval Shastri interacts with young astrophysicists, encouraging them to go a long way!

Shastri continues to use every platform to keep the discourse alive. “We are trying to get endorsements for the Hyderabad Charter from physicists across the country and 350 of them have endorsed it so far,” Shastri says. 

Acknowledging Shastri’s contribution, Dr Mamta Pandey-Pommeir, Chair of the The International Astronomical Union’s Women in Astronomy Working Group, France, tells 101Reporters that Shastri’s work has truly promoted Indian women’s careers in astronomy.

How this army doctor realised that kitchen is a battlefield for most rural women

by with 3 Comments Stories 2022

Posted on 29 August 2022

How this army doctor realised that kitchen is a battlefield for most rural women

By Rina Mukherji

From Maharashtra’s villages to Indo-Pak borders, Dr Monica Barne’s work in medicine has taken her many places. But over the past two decades, her contribution to creating awareness on pulmonary diseases remains the pinnacle of her work.

“It is not just rural folk. Even the lower middle and middle class in urban India pay scant attention to the health of women working in the kitchens,” Dr Monica Barne quips. “To bring about a change, the younger generation needs to step up. During a school education programme, I urged students to get a gift for their mothers — an exhaust fan.”

Technician Shweta and Major ( Dr ) Monica Barne testing a patient using spirometer

The director of the Pulmocare Research and Education (PURE) Foundation and the CEO and head (training division) of the Chest Research & Training (CREST) Pvt Ltd, Dr Barne has been at the forefront of creating awareness on pulmonary diseases across India over the past two decades.

However, it was her personal life that shaped her professional career.

My daughter was asthmatic and suffered terribly. Her condition got me interested in pulmonary research.

Driven by her daughter’s asthma, she kickstarted a career in respiratory research, where she focused not only on asthma and allergic rhinitis, but also chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), her area of particular interest. According to the Global Burden of Disease study, 1990-2016, the COPD accounts for the second highest number of deaths in India, after heart disease.

But before Dr Barne would gain recognition for her work in this field, she would make a journey in the medical field that would see her not only work with the Indian Army, but also help her understand the problems plaguing healthcare in rural India.

From fields to the battlefields

Hailing from a family of farmers in Maharashtra’s Akola district, Dr Barne received a lot of support. Even while he worked on the family farm in Akola, her father attended school, and ultimately completed his post-graduation in chemistry to join the Ministry of Defence’s DRDO Quality Assurance Division, from where he retired as deputy controller (QAE-Military Explosives). Her mother, on the other hand, could not finish her schooling due to early marriage, but she completed her matriculation thereafter.

Seeing the poor condition of the healthcare facilities in her ancestral village, Dr Barne was inspired to work in the medical field. After clearing her higher secondary board exams, she got admitted to Pune’s BJ Medical College.

It was immediately after she had completed the initial part of her medical internship in Pune that Dr Barne joined the Indian Army on a Short Service Commission. This coincided with a tumultuous period in Indian history. 

During her posting in a remote village in Gujarat’s Surendranagar district, where she was completing her rural internship, things took a serious turn with the Kargil War breaking out in July 1999. Dr Barne was sent to an advanced dressing station on the Indo-Pak border in Rajasthan’s Bikaner to attend to war casualties.

After the war ended, she managed the outpatient department in Bikaner city for the families of defence personnel. But two years later, things changed again when the Indian Parliament was attacked in December 2001. Next year, the army launched Operation Parakram, and Dr Barne was sent to the border again.

Dr (Major) Monica Barne as an army doctor. She served at the Indo-Pak border during the Kargil War in an advanced dressed station.

A patient being tested using a spirometer 

An eye-opener

While in Bikaner, Dr Barne also attended to local civilians as no proper healthcare was available to them. There, she rediscovered her diagnostic talents. For instance, she detected pericarditis (inflammation of the pericardium in the heart) in a heat stroke victim and immediately sent him to hospital, thus saving his life. Similarly, she detected a hole in the heart of a boy who had come to get a cough and cold treated.

However, Dr Barne was also exposed to the realities of rural India — the poverty and gender disparities. In treating women, she got first-hand experience of the ways of rural life.

There was this young couple, with a toddler, who had come to me. They wanted an abortion because the woman was saddled with an unwanted pregnancy. Abhi nahi chahiye (we don’t want another child now), she told me. Abortion was legal, but why were they not practising contraception? The woman had nothing to say when I questioned them. But talking to the husband, I realised he considered it below his dignity to use a condom. Because of him, his wife would suffer.

To new beginnings

Once her stint in the army ended, Dr Barne first moved to Nagpur. She then married marketing professional Sumit Barne and moved back to Pune, where she worked at places that did not involve treating patients, leaving her dissatisfied.

It was around the time her daughter Yutika was born, that her husband was transferred to Mumbai. Dr Barne decided to take a break as her daughter was still a toddler. Moreover, her daughter was asthmatic.

In a few years’ time, her husband was transferred back to Pune. Since the family had moved to Kalyani Nagar, where the Chest Research Foundation (CRF) was located, Dr Barne took the opportunity to join up as part of their medical team.

During her work with the CRF, Dr Barne not only fulfilled her ambition of treating the underprivileged, she also began working on her medical research. With the help of Dr Sundeep Salvi, who headed CRF, she did pioneering research on several respiratory morbidities.

For instance, Dr Barne was part of the POSEIDON study, which showed that lung diseases are the major reason patients visit a doctor across all age groups.

Crucially, she was also involved in developing material for the detection, prevention and diagnosis of COPD by Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) in rural India. She was also instrumental in highlighting the prevalence of respiratory disorders in rural women due to indoor air pollution through studies undertaken in the interiors of Maharashtra.

Dr (Major) Monica Barne as an army doctor. She served at the Indo-Pak border during the Kargil War in an advanced dressing station.

 

Moreover, Dr Barne was the lead researcher for the Global Asthma Network study on paediatric asthma, allergic rhinitis and eczema. The study used data from children and parents to determine the role of genetic and environmental factors in the prevalence of these diseases.

After CRF shut down a couple of years ago, Dr Barne set up the PURE Foundation and CREST in Pune with some of her former colleagues, to continue working on respiratory health.

A woman in medicine

Coming from a remote rural region, where even basic healthcare facilities were not available, her parents — her mother in particular — appreciated the value of doctors even more. Hence, they were glad when Dr Barne decided to pursue medicine.

Dr Barne especially singles out her mother for her unstinted support to herself and her siblings, where pursuing their respective professional careers is concerned.

She (mother) was appreciative of education and ended up making us all highly-educated professionals

Asked if she had any advice for women who want to be in STEM, Dr Barne has only this to say: “Go for it! Remember, you are as efficient and as capable as anyone else. Aspire to be a leader!”

Edited by Sharad Akavoor

Dr Barne on a jungle safari with her family

What is STEM?

by Blog

What is STEM?

STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. It includes different areas of science education such as natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology), applied science (engineering and technology) and mathematics. Over the years, these areas have come to be divided into niche specialisations, such as chemical-ecology, nanotechnology, robotics, artificial intelligence, etc, for better and deeper understanding of these particular domains. 

STEM education refers to the integrated teaching of these subjects through hands-on and relevant real-world learning experiences. STEM education is about solving problems, creativity, independent thinking, critical analysis and communication and pushing innovations. 

STEM education is increasingly viewed to be critical because the 21st century is driven by technological developments and innovation. Nearly all aspects of our daily lives, be it driving a car or listening to music, are underpinned by STEM fields. The technological revolution is poised to steer the global economy in the coming decades, and it’s time that we buckle up for the ride.

Status of Indian Women in STEM

by Blog

Men have traditionally dominated the sciences worldwide, and this holds true for STEM fields even today. Less than 30% of scientific researchers worldwide are women, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS).  In India, only 14% of scientists, engineers and technologists are women. This is despite the fact that nearly 43% of all graduates in India are women and that 32% of students are STEM graduates (2018). 

There are many reasons that prevent Indian women from pursuing sciences and realising their potential. Among them are lack of early childhood exposure and opportunities. Our society conditions us to believe that boys will grow up to be engineers and women will grow up to be teachers. Girls rarely receive chess sets or magnets as birthday gifts just as boys are seldom given dolls and kitchen kits. Does this mean that men cannot grow up to be chefs and nurses and women cannot become math wizards or physicists? Much of this societal conditioning has its roots in a culture of patriarchy and preconceived notions of what women ought to do and ought not to do. Taking even a small step against such established conventions requires enormous conviction and courage on the part of an individual.   

When women do, in fact, swim against such tides, the rewards are often still at a distance, on the horizon. Nearly 47% women in science cited family care as a reason for refusing a challenging opportunity in their careers, according to a 2016-17 Niti Aayog report.

Biases about gender roles mean women in science battle a ‘double-burden syndrome’ wherein they take breaks when getting married, during pregnancy and childbirth, as well as other familial responsibilities such as looking after ageing and unwell parents. While this is a setback for career women, it is especially problematic for women in STEM where such gaps can be detrimental to making progress in their research and pursuit.   

The silver lining in this scenario is that attitudes and mindsets are constantly changing. This is gradually becoming true for women in sciences, and especially for women in STEM as organisations and government policies are beginning to shift in favour of women. 

Several government schemes such as the Vigyan Jyoti Scheme, Unnat Bharat Abhiyan programme, Indo-US fellowship for women in STEMM, women-centric programmes under the Knowledge Involvement in Research Advancement through Nurturing (KIRAN) and the Biotechnology Career Advancement and Reorientation (Bio-Care) scheme are initiatives to bridge the gender gap and boost opportunities for women. Many tech companies aim to have inclusive and gender-balanced workforces, and have policies to recruit women.

Even as these baby steps are being taken, it is pertinent that we do not lose sight of the goal: women in STEM does not mean simply boosting the numbers of women in the field of sciences, but also that we encourage women to have a holistic and balanced life while choosing their pursuits in the realm of sciences. The idea is not to alienate men, but to be more sensitive and nurturing of the women who choose science.

 

Fellowships that can help you pursue research in STEM

by Blog

To encourage more women to be part of STEM and bridge the gender gap in these domains, many organisations, institutes and universities offer scholarships and fellowships to women interested in pursuing education in STEM. This is a list of a few such opportunities: 

  1. DST Women Scientist Fellowship
    India’s Department of Science & Technology offers the Women Scientist Fellowship to encourage women to continue their research career in science and technology after a break. The fellowship covers a monthly stipend of Rs55,000 and a project grant of about Rs30 lakh. The fellowship for those with a master’s degree covers a monthly income of Rs40,000 and a project grant of up to Rs25 lakh. 
  2. The Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship Program
    This scholarship is for female undergraduate and graduate students in the Asia-Pacific region. Students enrolled in universities for computer science, computer engineering and closely related fields are eligible to apply.
  3. The Graduate Women In Science (GWIS) National Fellowships Program
    GWIS provides funds to women scientists conducting research in the natural sciences in order to support women’s academic and scientific careers. The fellowship offers a maximum of $10,000 for upto 12 months.
  4. Women In Aviation International Scholarship
    Women in Aviation International (WAI) is a US-based non-profit that hopes to encourage the advancement of women in all aviation career fields. WAI awards scholarships to its members to advance their careers in aviation and aerospace. 
  5. Women Enhancing Technology (WeTech) Scholarship
    A partnership between Juniper Networks and the Women Enhancing Technology (WeTech) brought the scholarship and internship program for young women in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the United States, Europe and India. Indian women studying at the Manipal Institute of Technology, BMS College of Engineering and PSG College of Technology are eligible to apply for the scholarship, which includes a six-month internship at the Juniper offices in India. The scholarship is for women pursuing an engineering or computer science degree. 
  6. The Science Ambassador Scholarship
    Any woman planning to attend, or attending, a college in the United States can apply for the Science Ambassador Scholarship for any STEM field. All you have to do to apply is submit a three-minute (or lesser duration) video about a STEM subject that fascinates you and you want to learn more about it. This is an excellent support for students wanting to do their research in US universities.
  7. Indo-US Fellowship for Women in STEMM (WISTEMM)
    India’s Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Indo-US Science & Technology Forum (IUSSTF) offer the Indo-US Fellowship for Women in STEMM (WISTEMM) to Indian women scientists, engineers and technologists for international collaborations with research in premier US institutes. This fellowship offers two modules: Women overseas student internship program and the Women overseas fellowship program.
  8. MPOWER Women in STEM Scholarship
    Female candidates studying in the United States or Canada for STEM degree programs from international/DACA background are eligible to apply for this scholarship, which offers a grant each of $3,000 and $1,000.

These are just a few of the scholarships/fellowships on offer for Indian women. There are many other such opportunities that you can explore for a career in STEM. 

STEM: Fascinating Fields and opportunities

by Blog

In the coming decades, many of today’s routine jobs are expected to become automated thanks to the coming together of developments in fields such as information technology, robotics and artificial intelligence. The STEM fields therefore offer immense opportunities in terms of jobs in different industries, and this is expected to be the case in the coming decades.  Here’s a glimpse of some of the fields that are expected to see a boom:  

  1. Regenerative medicine: Regenerative medicine is all about developing processes and methods to replace, engineer, regrow, replace or regenerate human or animal cells to restore normal function. This is going to be the next alternate medicine industry. It offers enormous research and development opportunities.
  2. Animal behaviour: The way animals interact and communicate is a growing field of study to understand feeding, mating and survival behaviour. The world currently faces many environmental issues that are impacting the planet’s habitat  drastically. The field of animal behaviour offers several opportunities as an animal nutritionist, technician, physiotherapist, academic researcher, nature conservation officer, etc.  
  3. Environmental engineer: This branch of engineering focuses on protecting and conserving the environment. Given that the world faces the threat of climate change and regular extreme weather events, the field of environmental engineering will offer many opportunities.
  4. Sustainability and climate change research: The biggest crisis our planet faces today is that of climate change. We are on the edge and the only way to save the world from doom is to shift to a sustainable way of living. But what does it take to have sustainable habitats and lifestyles that don’t stress the planet’s resources? Sign up for this relevant field of study to find out.  
  1. Exploration geophysics: The Earth’s geology is mind-bogglingly diverse and fascinating. Underneath and upon the planet’s  surface are natural wonders such as minerals, gas, oil. If you like to scratch the surface, then geophysics is the field for you. 
  2. Digital forensics: Now that our lives are increasingly being lived in the digital realm, the world of digital identification, preservation, analysis, documentation, and presentation is finding a firm foothold. This up-and-coming field offers a broad range of career opportunities.

Robotics and nanosystems: The Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence are bringing automation and compact systems to every facet of our lives. Automated robots today find a range of applications including in factories, farm robots and even in housekeeping chores. These systems are expected to rein our lives in 2050, and so the time is ripe to opt for a research and development career in this field.