Women and Science:Needs for new policy formulation

There is a need for crucial insight on the participation of women in the area of sciences.Scientific knowledge plays a central role in today's modernized society.To see things from gender viewpoint,we happen to see that there is a wide gap between men and women in educational institution,engineering,technology,research relating to sciences.This fact is surprisingly ignore by the nation's policymakers.If India's vision of developed country by 2020 is to be fulfilled,there must be end to the kind practices that are against women.In this globalized contemporary world,the country must be prepared for ''global competitive readiness'' in the field of sciences too.Conventional barriers like negative stereotyping of girls' such as their interests and abilities towards sciences,math and research are in dire needs that requires rethinking and reformulation at the policy levels of government and society at large as well.In a study done by one Bix in 1996,it shows that women activism reveals success not only in making public awareness but also in making use of statistics to gain research money and challenge research in breast cancer research,so women are a key component in the field that concerns them most.The liberal feminist approach says that there should be equal access to science by women and in the labor force.Here it speak of schooling and employment as an over riding agenda while the transformative perspective point out that it is not a question of adding women in sciences but demasculinize the arenas that are under male domains.In 1993,the science and technology office of the UK said that women are the country's most underutilzed resources.If science is conceived as an institutionalized means that is crucial for national economic development or ''science for progress'' is the mantra of national development,women's role in this field can hardly be ignored.Therefore,the question of gender equity in science is not just a question for feminist alone,the challenge is for all.Our country must look beyond conventional thinking and policies in regard to science and women.


References:

Drori,Gili.S;Science in the modern world polity: institutionalization and globalization,Stanford University Press,2003

Internationalisation and Globalisation in Mathematics and Science Education
 Angela Calabrese Barton, Bill Atweh, Marcelo C. Borba, Noel Gough, Christine Keitel, Catherine Vistro-Yu, Renuka Vithal,2008

Copyright:Bhaskar Pegu

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