Prof Anitha Kurup: Championing women in STEM through actionable research

Tracing the beginnings of gender in STEM studies in India has its own difficulties, as the numbers were hardly recorded until the recent decades. Some iconic women are gaining more recognition nowadays, thanks to initiatives like Google Doodles, Wiki marathons and books. However, there is still a need for more research and advocacy to change attitudes, behaviours and systems related to women in STEM. 

Collecting data from primary and secondary sources was a challenging task. However, her Trends in Higher Education study changed the scenario by garnering nationwide attention. This study’s data and discussions opened many avenues, including the All India Survey in Higher Education (AISHE).  Data from AISHE pointed to a positive trend of growing enrolment numbers of women in STEM fields in India, which was opposite to the problem of low enrolment rates affecting the Western counterparts. This difference brings forth the need to have different research strategies and policies specifically catering to India’s women in STEM. 

Kurup’s next work related to data from AISHE highlighted that despite the positive trend in enrolment numbers, India was facing a leaky pipeline issue. After getting a PhD, where do these women end up? What more should be done to translate it into a significant number of women faculty in sciences? She postulates that enrolment numbers alone cannot answer these questions, and there is a need to investigate the socioeconomic and cultural aspects of women and gender roles, as well as the professional outcomes vis-a-vis personal outcomes. “We need to understand the struggles of those who could not survive the system and the strategies and decisions that contributed to the success of women in STEM to delve deep with a holistic approach,” she says.  

Kurup faced difficulties while studying women in science as some of her collected data went unused to ensure the participants’ safety and trust. Another difficulty was that women in science, previously considered homogenous as a group, had various levels of heterogeneity — subjects, experience levels, etc. She found that along with these different nuances, a broad pattern existed across academic and non-academic domains where women had to perform much better than men to survive in the system. 

In India, women often face challenges when climbing the career ladder due to the timelines of marriage and family commitments. Therefore, they look for various ways to gather support for their personal and professional lives. To understand the scenario for women in STEM in India, Kurup interviewed women scientists and found the initial articulation that a supportive family was important. However, later it became more pronounced that the husband’s support was most crucial as it was instrumental in getting the family’s (particularly the in-laws’) support. In her own life, with her husband’s support, Kurup could plan her pregnancies according to her career’s trajectory.  Her mother left her job in Saudi Arabia and returned to India to look after Kurup’s children in their early years of growth. 

When most women in STEM juggle multiple responsibilities, it leaves little time for mentoring younger generations. Yet, for those few who manage to dodge or move beyond these problems, Kurup says their stories and strategies must be shared to inspire and motivate others. Anjali Raj, currently a PhD Scholar at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, says that while working with Kurup before joining PhD, she closely saw a kind and supportive professor like Kurup survive academia which is infamous for the opposite. Kurup was extremely supportive of Raj’s health condition due to PCOS and encouraged work-life balance. She hopes that as an early career researcher, she will be able to continue this trend in the years to come.