Many dilemmas of the ‘daughters of Lilavati’

Nilanjana Gupta

Lilavati was just another Indian woman — bright and intelligent with a father who worried about her marriage and eventual motherhood.  Her father read her horoscope and discovered that she was destined to remain unmarried or widowed and childless: a fate worse than death for a girl. Thus, he calculated again and again the movements of the stars until he found a small gap of time when the heavens could allow his daughter to fulfil the dream of domestic bliss.  However, destiny could not be tricked, and in his grief, the father named one of his most important books after his presumably widowed and childless daughter and thus immortalised her name.  

Lilavati is the title of the first of the four volumes — the others being Bijaganita, Grahaganita and Goladhyaya — of Siddhanta Shiromani, the most famous work of the 12th century mathematician Bhaskar II of Bijapur. Like the typical patriarch, he passed on his position as Court mathematician and his knowledge to his son.  Of Lilavati, nothing further is known. It is thus ironic that the Indian Academy of Science publication on the women scientists of India is titled Lilavati's Daughters.  Even more so if one reads the biographies and autobiographical texts that comprise the volume, as it seems that things have hardly changed for the Indian woman.  Presumably, the volume is meant to be inspirational.  

Girls would read the stories of women who have been awarded the Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan, the Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Award, the C. V. Raman Award, not to mention international awards and recognition, who have headed research institutes, been nominated as Fellows of National Academy of Sciences and initiated significant research in the best institutes in the country.  Young girls would read about such role models and aspire to be such scientists themselves.  

Yet any student who reads these stories of success, will also hear the warnings that seep through the pages of the celebratory texts.  One of these amazing women concludes her piece thus:   “In spite of gender-differential treatment from the scientific community in India, I got the Vikram Sarabhai Award for Planetary Sciences, 1977, the Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Lectureship award, 1993, the Vainu Bappu International Award in Astrophysics, 1994, and the Lifetime Achievement award of the University of Chicago in 1996.”  A winner of many awards says: “It was almost impossible for me, a woman scientist in a man-dominated field, to get nominated for prestigious awards like the Bhatnagar award.”

  Many of them mention the ominous ticking of the biological clock just during the most crucial time in one's career:  “The complexities of negotiating gender and professional roles tend to become most acute for most women in their late twenties and thirties. This is partly because these are the years when decisions regarding marriage and children are made.” But also because these are the years when one has to establish one's academic independence and viability. Additionally, there are family pressures; as a younger scientist says: “There was constant pressure from my family to take a job in the same city where my husband is, but I felt it was important to have my own independent research career.”

The fact that Lilavati's daughters are still struggling in our avowedly post-modernist world of equal opportunities is clear in the enrolment figures at the level of higher education.   The percentage of women enrolling in Arts subjects is an overwhelming 42 per cent, in science it is 19 per cent, followed by 16 per cent in commerce and management and 11 per cent in engineering and technology.  (All figures are for 2011).

  In the sciences, the gender gap at the undergraduate level is not particularly wide as the male:female ratio is 60:40.  However, this gap becomes sharply larger at the higher levels.  According to MHRD figures, chemistry has the highest number of PhD students, at 5,249.  Of this, 3,308 are males and 1,941 females. Physics has a total number of 3,007 PhD students, with 2,118 males and 889 females. The total number of students enrolled in PhD in mathematics is 2,356, out of which 1,441 are males.  

In the engineering disciplines, the gap is much wider. For example, in Computer Sciences and Information Technology, over 75 per cent of the enrolled PhD students are male.  The situation is worse in most other technology disciplines, with a few exceptions such as food technology. This imbalance is carried over to the workforce, where only 12 per cent of the workforce in science and engineering-related industries is female.  However, in the Information Technology sector, the figure is higher at 28 per cent.  It is revealing that even today, the National Science Academy has only 10 per cent female members. These figures should not be seen in isolation, but in a larger context of the nation's intention and ability to include women in the processes of economic and social empowerment that are shaping India today.  A multi-country study concludes that: “India is making slow progress in regard to advancing women in science” and connects it with the “low rankings in female participation in the labour force, access to resources, participation in the knowledge economy, and health status.” However, there may be a positive side to this story. News stories surrounding the Mars Orbiter Mission pointed out that about 10 per cent of the ISRO scientists involved were women.  Photographs of sari-clad women, with flowers in their hair and bindis on their forehead, celebrating the launch were reprinted in newspapers across the world.  This was a boost to all women aspiring to be scientists, not just in India, but all over the world.  Not the tragic Lilavatis after whom volumes are named, they are writers of exciting scripts — in their own lives and in the demanding world of science. India needs more of them.

The writer is  Professor, Department of English, 

Jadavpur University