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‘Inclusivity needs societal push, bottom-up approach’
Addressing socio-economic factors is key to increasing women's participation in STEM, emphasizing equality, parental roles, and mental health support.
Women’s participation in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) requires addressing socioeconomic factors that keep them away from such fields from the initial stage, including parental mindset, the role of schools and mediums such as cinema that portray males at the forefront of engineering and medicine. Speaking at the HT Future-Ed Conclave’s session on “Inclusive Science and Tech Education” on Friday, IIT Kharagpur director Suman Chakraborty said the role played by higher education comes much later in shaping a woman’s decision to pick STEM-related fields, and to increase participation, a bottom-up approach must be practised.
“Socio-economic reasons restrict the admission of girl children to STEM institutions, whereas the role of the institution comes much later in the picture. Biases that certain fields are much more suited for boys than girls still plague our society; these need to be addressed and solved to make higher education more inclusive,” said Chakraborty. “From the initial stage, a sense of equality must be cultivated and the role played by parents and peers would be crucial,” he added.
He also mentioned that technology as an enabler is likely to contribute to higher participation.
“Technology doesn’t discriminate between a girl and a boy, so we must adapt more to bring that parity. Using AI, one can prepare better than going to Kota and staying away from parents for three years,” said the IIT Kharagpur director.
Addressing the issue of students’ mental health in the same panel discussion, BITS Pilani vice-chancellor Ramgopal Rao said female students are well-equipped to cope with stress. He highlighted that the trouble faced by male students vis-a-vis females in terms of dealing with stressful situations needs much more attention.
“Mental health is a big challenge in today’s time. The challenge is not much associated with girls but is more prevalent among boys; for instance, cases of suicide due to competitive exam pressure fuelled by the coaching culture are more common for male students. Girls handle these pressures much better and are less distracted. There’s no study to back this up, but seeing the trend, if something needs to be done on this front, it has to be for boys,” said Rao.
Speaking about the pay package hype in premier institutes, VIT pro-vice-chancellor Partha Sarathi Mallick said it feeds unrealistic expectations in the minds of an entire generation, including parents and students.
“A package as a whole means nothing; a career is a long race and how individual differences play out in the long run is very uncertain,” said Mallick. Parental pressure in terms of return on investment is also built around such unrealistic expectations, he added.
