Women Scientists in the Third World: The Indian Experience

"This book is unique ‘collective biography’ of full-time women faculty in the ‘hard’ sciences at the University of Madras, India. As an ethnographic case study, it combines a comprehensive description of the lives and careers of individual women who struggle in a male dominated workplace that marginalizes them, with an analysis of the structures and organizational features that serve to maintain them in that peripheral position. Lalita Subrahmanyan focuses upon the perception and attitudes of women in science toward themselves, their careers, their relationships with colleagues, their research interests, their communication strategies and linkages, the manner in which their family life intersects with their work, and the discipline of science and its value. Through this analysis, the author illustrates how higher education institutions in India function, as well as the manner in which scientific research is conducted in them. She concludes that women scholars suffer from twin handicaps–they are affected by the neocolonial structures and attitudes which hamper all scientists from the Third World while their careers are restricted by the constraints imposed by an essentially patriarchal society. Researched from the perspective of feminist studies of science and the broader international agenda on women in science, two portraits emerge from this seminal study–that of Indian women as scientists and that of Indian scientists as women. It will attract those in the fields of feminist and development studies, science, sociology and education."