Friday, June 13, 2008

Quoting "We Build a Better World"

There have been three major instances in my life when I felt the ardent need for a stronger women representation in the research community. And those were the times that made me think the role I could play in contributing something towards promoting this gender diversity.

The first instance was when I attended a major conference Workshop to find out that I was the only female presenter there. And when on the second instance, one day I came across the list of 100 most genius living people in the world, to my utter dismay, I found out that there were less than five women in the entire grand vista. And the third instance was last year’s Grace Hopper conference in Orlando, when I was moved to ecstasy to hear Frances Allen as the first female recipient of the prestigious Turing Award in its forty years of illustrious history.

One of the biggest challenges I always faced ever since I joined the Doctoral program
was the under-representation of women in the Department. I am not happy enough when my friends and acquaintances console me saying that I am doing great in my career being a girl. For, I believe talent is genderless and unbounded by the deep-grained biases we have about women not being competent enough. There is an ardent need, I feel, to strike a change to our society and such realm of thinking that it entails.

A conference like Grace Hopper comes as a great rescue to my motivation – a dream where every woman would consider herself competent enough to take to the list of the 100 most genius living people! I believe it would be a great opportunity to meet, get inspired and in turn motivate other fellow companions who have taken the courage to tread the challenging path of being a woman researcher.


The conference could play a great role inviting greater number of women to paint together the colorful sky of research, irrespective of considerations of race, color, creed or societal bias.



2 comments:

alok said...

That is really good. Let me pass this information on to people at my work place; I hope Grace Hopper, would motivate at least one of them, if not all.

Madhuri said...

Truly said. Talent is Genderless as well as the interest & orientation. Very few women join Ph.D as their career doesn't mean their lack of talent. :)