Janlokpal bill: a brahmanic and patriarchal script

The Jan Lokpal bill is under 35 pages. The creators of this document successfully manufactured a ‘revolution’ out of this. The corporate media sold it as such, and some academics called it a ‘movement’.

Media and academia largely did not comment on the contents of the document. Their preoccupation was with the leaders on the dais and the people on the Ramlila grounds.

In a caste ordered, rigidly patriarchal society like ours, exclusion of dalitbahujan men and women is the default status when socio-political changes are framed by upper-caste, male-dominated power groups, such as Kejriwal’s team. Unless contested, this group of unelected civil society actors will not concede their male and caste privileges. Hence all their formulations have to be meticulously examined for their apparent and hidden biases against women and non-dominant castes.  Read the rest here

jasmine gajras for lokpal men

the ten member jan lokpal bill committee constituted post ‘revolution’ seen conferring at their first meeting. does anything seem strange here?

you know, my country does have women. they are just out of this picture. perhaps they are behind the camera, or behind the men, or simply left out. how can that be? i saw angry women ‘revolutionaries’ at the forefront of the anti-corruption ‘revolution’. think, i recognized a socialite turned gandhian, a famous retired police officer, prominent film personalities and anti-big dam activists. all these women are ones who reached the top echelons of their respective professions. surely, they did not fail to ask for inclusion in the committee -an all-powerful supra-parliamentary one! surely, these women know the long-lasting repercussions of excluding women in top committees (?)

feminist credentials, they all have. their decades long high volume presence in the media assures us that a feminist movement is thriving in india. so, what happened? someone, please explain the invisible patriarchal processes that facilitated this exclusion of the super bright, super ambitious indian women (naturally all upper caste).

Their voice on violence

Violence on the female body and mind, in private and public spaces continues as an endless and thriving phenomenon for women from disenfranchised communities, well into modernity. This is possible only because the state and its institutions as well as civil society sanction it, through action and inaction. Violence on these women is about the bloodcurdling kind; it is also about forms rarely associated with this word: the malnourished female body is the result of selectively failing systems, that they work efficiently for other women indicates the insidious ways in which violence manifests. All societies that render marginalized women undernourished and unhealthy are indeed violent societies.

In these ongoing crimes we are all implicated as perpetrators and abettors.  We devise many ways to hide from this ugly truth about ourselves, and one common ploy is to intellectually distance ourselves from these women –pretend they are on a planet separate from ours and all things happening there can be viewed superficially or ignored all together. At all times keep ourselves pure from that violence, if we do not see, hear, talk or think about it, we can lull our brains into imagining that we play no active role in that violence. Almost attain a spiritual distance! However, some voices do not care for this personal and public deception, increasingly I see these voices belong to Muslim women. I am deeply suspicious of elite women from any community taking up digital and text space espousing the cause of women as they have a tendency to reduce the vast canvas of experience and insights to a pixel of themselves –which leads to caricaturing the women’s experiences they intended to represent. But in contemporary times both elite and other Muslim women have managed to usher in an insurgent intellectual era that is rooted in the lived experiences of the most marginalized in their societies. I also find in their articulation an understanding of politics and its grip on female sexuality, freedom and all things female, more powerful, more realistic than other kinds of female voices attempting the same.

An exceptional observation in the diverse Muslim women’s voices articulating on women’s issues is that they seem to have the rare appreciation of the very obvious but completely ignored fact of human life: high intelligence is required for the survival of the most stressed humans – the marginalized women. Intelligence is deployed in extremely complex ways to retain their humanity while almost perpetually living in soul-destroying conditions. This is brought to light in the sensitive portrayal of the marginalized women’s struggle for a dignified life in stories by authors like the Kannada writer Bhanu Mustaq, in poems by the young Telugu poet Shahjahana, in the intellectual analysis of violence by drawing on personal stories by Muslim women activists working in NGO’s spread across the Muslim world. To the ones who follow the message in their articulation -marginalized women do not require our intelligence to save them; they need us to use it on ourselves to stop being the triggers and abettors of violence. It is we who need corrective measures to lead less violent lives. Can we?

The killing of the prominent Afghan intellectual-activist Meena in the late 80′s left a deep  impact on me, her organization RAWA (Revolutionary Association of Women of  Afghanistan) is the most inspiring model of activism for me, if some readers are  not  familiar with their work, please read here. Closer home, Bhanu Mushtaq’s short stories  brought home the power of the individual to demand change -no matter how alone she was  and how bereft of material possessions. I have had access to very few poems by  Shahjahana that were translated, and I am always looking for more of her amazing  poetry. Other voices further  away from home like Shirin Ebadi, Ayaan Ali, Shirin  Neshat  and many others help  me focus on the psychology of gender violence (both, the  aggression  and resistance). While there are such few insights into the lives of dalit women and their  struggles, I eagerly  and naturally draw from Muslim women’s articulation on aspects of  gender violence.

Thoughts on this topic are on various drafts, I hope to find the time to compile them into a post or posts. Some friends find me naive that I am not taking the whole context in which some of these Muslim women are being heard. That’s OK, if, I am shown other voice/s that situates correctly the marginalized woman as a highly intelligent human and examines analytically the forces and sources of violent actions of society which leave her at its receiving end , then I will reexamine my fixation, until then I am deeply grateful to these powerful and meaningful Muslim women’ s voices.

Some Vedic ‘reasons’

Sukumari Bhattacharji tracks prostitution in ancient India in an essay in the book  -Women in early Indian Societies.

This scholar is working with ancient reference materials; she cites some 100 odd references and notes. She culls words which might mean prostitute, gathers texts which might indicate the economics, the family structure, the position of women then, and is also inferring from all this, the possible reasons leading to the origin of prostitution in India, since the time when written texts were available.

crows miniskirts and a war chief

Crow Shitting

L Thomas Kutty

It takes just a shit on your head
For the crow to retrieve its identity.
The notorious sidelong glance helps
(Sectarian views will do –
At least for crows).
The lonely hermit on the power line,
The faithful soldier in the dark legion
On its homeward flight at dusk,
The starkest of poetic images,
A stop in transit
For an ancestor’s transmigrating soul.

But we know how to put it in its place:
No upstart crow ever became a swan.
The British East India Company’s
Records will tell you that.

Undaunted by the taunt
It goes back to business.
Shitting on the petrified expressions of guilt
And glorified legends of sacrifice
Of the men of destiny –
Ineffectual scarecrows in stone –
Who darken the city squares
With their looming shadows,
Making no distinction
Between subaltern and hegemon.

The grey shit
Retrieves its black identity.

—–

Somebody posted this poem in response to the fresh discussion around V V Rao’s poem, yep, that one. I prefer crow shit to that shit of a post. When I first read it and the following discussion, it was too silly to bother with a reread, but was very amused at the alacrity with which they were defining the elite/middleclass female sexuality -read as upper caste female body. In all the acute angles in which they explored the poet’s intended insult to their sexuality, it did not occur to them even once that low caste, poor girls can be cute,  may wear miniskirts and high heels. Had they considered this possibility then the poet’s words would have been insulting the sexuality of low caste  girls too, right? But then. Can the sky be green? Its that absurd a notion.

Without taking away all the hard work, and intellectual rigor that goes into churning out these theorists (at the tax payers expense which include all the dalit, adivasi and minority women, may I add) and give them the benefit of doubt, that theirs is a well considered position on Indian women’s sexuality especially their own class -which they refer to as elite. It would help me if they defined elite in urban or rural terms, since the whole discussion revolves around caste and reservations, there is a simple equation going on, only upper caste women can be elite, and be the ones who wear miniskirts, high heels and are uniformly cute (very assembly line!). All of  which seem to be highly threatening to men such as VV Rao, interpreted via his badly translated poem.

Some trivia.

I wore my first highheels in class four -a white strapless thingy, swung a hockey stick with a sports skirt that was definitely mini, studied in a school catering to girls from very poor to marginally well of families, many of them had pictures of moms and aunts in miniskirts and highheels -poor girls in Bangalore cantonment area did not have elite upper caste girls as their role models in dress sense or anything else -EVER. Their sense of style has always been cool and unique and it draws from a wide range of cultural influences owing to the cosmopolitan nature of the city.

When other metro cities were strangulated their young women in yards and yards of material, Bangalore streets, even before the pub culture took root, saw women attired quite comfortably in jeans, trousers and skirts, a definite nod to the influence of the city’s once prominent anglo indian community. The girls in elite hindu uppercaste residential areas in Bangalore were wrapped in silk pavadai and davanis, lovely garments, though I would never call them as power dresses. The boys used to call those longskirts -parachutes- as they tended to billow around in the wind, with the girls hastening to hold them down.

Other cities waited for the influence of a few generations of foreign returned relatives and mass media to begin wearing western wear. The girls from lower middleclass and poor areas of Bangalore, on the other hand drew from local affordable styles and carried it off with causal ease. The theorists will of course say this is a bad sample and not representative, precisely why I would ask who do they call elite, when it comes to manner of dressing, the upper caste girls in cities or does it include uppercaste girls in rich families in small towns too?

While I want to point out that their observation of girls, clothing and female sexuality in India is rather strange, I am aware, it is a pointless exercise, theirs is a myopic world, blind to the very existence of girls from poor or lower castes backgrounds except in pre fabricated opinions of them as incapable of affording and dressing themselves in western wear.

Now, do I think western wear somehow accentuates woman power? Needs a separate post. But yes, it lets the female body to be more free than some Indian garments. That leads to the question are we aware of the different kinds of clothes that Indian girls wear in all the regions of India,  that allows some to make such sweeping statements? I have traveled a bit and lived in a few  Indian cities and still know next to nothing about the different kinds of dresses young women wear in different regions.

Does it matter at all what a select few think, and articulate on their narrow opinions? Sadly yes, read this disgusting report on how the tribal girls looks and manners are denigrated here by public officials. This, is the manifestation of all that elite talk. Verbal proof of entrenched values of exclusion. Racism and sexism pushed eloquently by college and university educated bunch of men and women. The women revel in spreading this pathology against ‘other’ women. Indian women are more racist than Indian men towards women they consider the ‘other’. The ‘other’ is not everybody outside their gothra, no, they are others with definite skin color, physical attributes -lower caste and tribal. The genetically and geographically distant white woman is never the ‘other’. For it is her attire that is being appropriated and is being bandied about as some arrived at state of awareness.

Miniskirt is a power statement because it shows more skin? I am not sure about that. It does trigger another old memory, from my days as a pre teen kid spent in Karwar along the Konkan coast. I saw more skin and well toned female legs of the local fisherwomen than what I see in peak summer here in the all-white town, I now live in.

When at work, those ladies wore their sarees in a way, one could see their beautiful legs right up to the upper thighs. They dressed that way to do business. Power dressing? Oh yes! These fisherwomen spelt woman power to me. Style, strength, attitude, they had it all.

So all you Indian girls claiming a black identity, you have no business with words such as ‘cute’ ‘miniskirts’ ‘highheels’. Class theorists who lesson up in workshops on gender  and blah, define these words as ‘elite girls only’. And air hostess is a definite no as a career option.

—-

River is calling all crow lovers. I love crows, the above poem changed me from being an admirer to being one. I like that even more, not that I believe in souls flying anywhere after death and stopping to say hello to me, or from within me . But simply because crows personify my dream of travelling to strange places and enjoying exotic views of distant cultures, without having to get off the fence. Strangely, there is no human culture that would see the crow as the ‘other’. I guess most cultures would like to claim it as their very own. There are half dozen Tamil sayings on crows that I would love to share here, some other day perhaps. Though I will romance a bit on Pine Leaf, the woman war chief of the Crow Indian tribe, to further  turn symbols upside down.

Pine Leaf wanted nothing to do with learning any traditional duties expected from the tribe’s women. She did dress the part of a beautiful woman but chose the actions of a fearsome warrior. The Crow Indians allowed her to join in the male activities with the braves. The men of the tribe and Pine Leaf’s adoptive father seemed to enjoy her spunk and encouraged her fighting spirit.

White men who crossed Pine Leaf’s path along the fur trade route were totally confounded by her.  They had never seen, or even heard of, such a woman who could strike such terror in the hearts of men.  They were confused, fascinated, and intimidated by her very presence.  Since there was nothing in their own cultures they could compare to Pine Leaf, she became known as the Absaroka Amazon among the white traders.  She became almost a mythical figure to them.

I like crows in miniskirts or in fisherwoman’s sarees, neither apparel takes away from their sleek body lines. Here’s to a  black world of crows that tells the pallid world to go shit on itself with dumb theories.

so much racket

 

 i like reading and listening to readings of  sojourner truth for the sheer power in it. i am no feminist, i am from a community fighting for such basic rights as food, shelter, jobs and dignity, i don’t know which edges of the battle to choose; children, men or women’s rights, for they are all trampled upon. and they are all connected to me. so i choose to be a curious human instead. have a strong day!

From her side

kanchipuram sarees

in five different shades

same border, same mundaani

her side

thinks we are schoolgirls 

thali and koora podavai

from our side

wedding-hall breakfast,

lunch and dinner

from her side

some guests left

without thambulam

not enough coconuts

who did the buying? 

someone

from her side

——–

mundaani: palu

koora podavi: bride’s saree 

The hypocrisy of such transactions could make for many a standup comedy shows, if it was not so tragic for the ones at the lowest end. It is a common belief that the lower castes in general do not practice dowry. It is far from the truth, as they try hard to match up to the dominant hindu social and cultural practices, dowry exchange is rampant. All my life i have heard this phrase ‘from her side’ always with a negative and accusatory tone.  Since all my siblings are in intercaste marriages, and many cousins are in caste marriages, and some are in villages and some in metro cities, I often get a wide view of practices of atleast half dozen castes (mostly south indian) and they are all the same when it comes to heaping it on the girls side.

Rise to learn and act

Rise to learn and Act

Weak and oppressed! Rise my brother  

Come out of living in slavery.  

Manu-follower Peshwas are dead and gone

Manu’s the one who barred us from education.

Givers of knowledge –the English have come

Learn, you’ve had no chance in a millennium.

We’ll teach our children and ourselves to learn

Receive knowledge, become wise to discern.

An upsurge of jealousy in my soul

Crying out for knowledge to be whole.

This festering wound, mark of caste

I’ll blot out from my life at last.

In Baliraja’s kingdom, let’s beware

Our glorious mast, unfurl and flare.

Let all say, “Misery go and kingdom come!”

Awake, arise and educate

Smash traditions-liberate!

We’ll come together and learn

Policy-righteousness-religion.

Slumber not but blow the trumpet

O Brahman, dare not you upset.

Give a war cry, rise fast

Rise, to learn and act.

+++

Sunil Sardar and Victor Paul have translated this poem along with four other poems for a chapter in a lovely new book titled: A forgotten liberator: The life and struggles of Savitribai Phule. These poems were translated from M.G. Mali’s original marathi collection Savitribai Phule Samagra Wangmaya.

This book is a first of its kind in English on the social reformer and first woman teacher of India Savitribai Phule, by independent  authors.

Indian history is not just porous and one sided but is often a naked lie for and about the large majority of people who were once forbidden any formal education under the caste system. It would have us believe that this vast humanity produced no thoughts and actions worthy of mention in its pages. Occasionally stray strands do get woven into this brutally selective reading of the past like the 9th century Saint Nandanaar and 13th century Janabai. These are names that have escaped and appear in literature inadvertently; perhaps a rare occurrence of negligence in the maintenance of tightly clamped literary facilities. The hegemonic majority treats any acknowledgement of original, radical thoughts and actions emanating from the lower castes akin to radiation leaks. It has to be avoided at all costs and they use every single resource they command to do so. However, when such histories are far too powerful to fall into the usual traps of appropriation and co-option, they have the strategy of just saying and writing nothing about it. Stonily waiting for the collective memory to erase itself over generations.

In the last century a small group of people from within the lower castes have emerged to retell Indian history. This they do by finally claiming and owning the alphabet, taking us to the ones who made it possible; Savitribai Phule and her husband Jyotirao Phule, the visionary educators and social reformers. How cruel and effective a system we face, when this lady who in the mid-late 1800’s sought English as a liberating tool for the masses, only now in the year 2009  an independent well researched book on her life and achievements gets published in English!! This effort has been done by a group of dedicated scholars and researchers on their own steam. To the marginalized these efforts come as iridescent showers of enlightenment connecting us to the vibrant ancestors and their vision of an egalitarian society, their compassion and empathy rooting us firmly back to this soil. We stop feeling like ahistorical entities as we begin reading about the life and struggles of Savitribai Phule. A feeling of sudden awakening grips and removes the hovering disconnectedness for members of the oppressed communities, to whom she dedicated her life!

The startling strength and razor sharp intellect of this pioneer leader taking on society’s myriad evil and unquestioned practices of inequality among humans and between men and women is stunning in its forcefulness and sincerity. We receive this rare and fantastic effort of bringing out a book on Savitribai Phule like a sparkling oasis to quench the thirst of a million throats, charging us with fresh energy to continue on with her legacy.

I chose this poem of the five in this book as it brings us closer to the multifaceted personality of a reformer whose engaged poetry weaves her politics into her verses. In them one gets a glimpse of the mind of a woman completely dedicated to education of the downtrodden. Her impatience to see them empowered, her conviction that knowledge alone is the ingredient for salvation of people caught in unending cycles of servitude and destitution speaks volumes. Her revolutionary call to shake of the mantle of ignorance and fear of scriptures can be grasped only in the background of a time when her husband and she were ostracized from their family and home as they feared a backlash against the couple’s move to educate women and untouchables.

The undisputed place Savthribai Phule holds as the pioneer in women and human rights movements in India at a glance below:

Events	Year
Birth of SavitriBai.(Naigaon,Tha. Khandala Dist. Satara) Father’s name- Khandoji Nevse, Mother’s name- Laxmi.	3rd Jan.1831
Marriage with Jotirao Phule.	1840
Education started.	1841
Passed third and fourth year examination from Normal school.	1846-47
Started school with Sagunabai in Maharwada.	1847
Country’s first school for girls was started at Bhide’s wada in Pune and Savitribai was nominated as the first head mistress of the school.	1 Jan.1848
School for adults was started at UsmanSheikh’s wada in Pune. Left home with Jotirao for educating Shudra and ati Shudra’s .	1849
First public Til-Gul programme was arranged by Mahila Seva Mandal.	14 Jan.1852
Phule family was honoured by British government for their works in the field of education and Savtribai was declared as the best teacher.	16 Nov.1852
Infanticide prohibition home was started.	28 Jan.1853
Prize giving ceremony was arranged under the chairmanship of Major Candy.	12 Feb.1853
“Kavya Phule”-the first collection of poems was published.	1854
A night school for agriculturist and labourers was started.	1855
‘Lecture’s of Jyotiba’ was published.	25 Dec.1856
Orphanage was started.	1863
Opened the well to untouchables.	1868
Adopted son of Kashibai, a Brahmin Widow’s Child.	1874
Done important work in famine and started 52 free food hostels in Maharashatra.	1876 to 1877
Adopted son, Dr.Yashwant was married to the daughter of Sasane.	4 Feb.1889
Death of her husband Jotirao Phule .	28 Nov. 1890
Chairperson of Satya Shodhak Samaj Conference at Saswad.	1893
Again famine in Maharashtra. Forced government to start relief work.	1896
Plague epidemic in Pune.Had done social work during this hour.	1897
Died while serving the Plague paitents during plague epidemic.	10 March 1897
Centenary year in Maharashtra and National honour.	10 March 1997 to 98
Government of India honored her by publishing a postage stamp.	10 March 1998

=============

Source: A forgotten liberator: The life and struggles of Savthribai Phule. Page 66.

Edited by

Braj Ranjan Mani

Pamela Sardar. 

Update: A earlier NCERT book on the life of Savithribai Phule is also available.

Melanin rich Dalits

This conversation here reminded me of this first post i had written, it is one of the posts that is most regularly read for some odd reason, readers use the tag ‘dark indian girl’ to reach here, i wonder about it sometimes .

Valli’s Beauty

Not the Tamil God’s tribal consort, but just someone known to me. Valli, husband and young son arrived in Bangalore as migrants. What they sought? What they got? Interesting line of inquiry, but, here, I want only to share few stories that I heard from Valli.

Valli did not land in the usual receptacles meant for poor villagers fleeing drought and other nasties, i.e, the sprawling slums of Bangalore city. Instead, she got housing within the grounds of a regal bungalow owned by an elite Anglo-Indian family, thanks to husband’s green fingers. He was hired as the resident gardener. Valli, got into the bungalow routine. Thus, knew the tea-making, serving and other genteel stuff.

Valli as I remember her then, was in her late thirties, around 5′2, very dark skinned, not the blotchy kind, but the uniform shade, with even facial features. She wore thick rimmed glasses, giving her the appearance of a stern professor with an exotic hairstyle. Wish I could draw, for describing that style is difficult. Hair was tucked in a way that had the ends of her tresses framed around her head in a fan shaped arrangement. Her gait was proud and erect. Her form was slender.

Death of the aging patrons, brought Valli and family to the slums. A reluctant Valli started as housemaid and baby sitter to families in the neighborhood. She gained the reputation of being a loyal but fastidious worker. In the meantime, the extended family from the village kept coming into the city, in a steady stream. As the drought did not go away, the elections always got over, with it, promises of better rural life, while other nasties just got nastier. Valli kept track of the in coming clan members, doing her best to keep the men from succumbing to alcohol, and women from prostitution.

Valli and husband, could never do enough for their only son. The story of her becoming a mother after many years of marriage, was recounted in great detail, every moment of motherhood was magnified for Valli. Poor eyesight had always plagued her. She would tear up while recalling near total blindness, for the first three years of her son’s life. The way she traced her baby’s features and kept him safe from danger, always transfixed her listeners. Herbal medicines and glasses helped her regain her sight to some extent.

When it was time to find a bride for the beloved son, Valli was teased by other women, where will you find the perfect girl? Are you going to find him a fair one? No, was the prompt reply. “Amman pola”, meaning dark like the village goddess, she said. She was dead serious and would explain in her clear voice, that in her community pale skinned girls were not sought after. Beauty is dark. Period.

Take home messages for me from Valli’s anecdotes came in handy at different points.

It took me a long time to realize that girls like me in School were not part of any cultural activities (read on-stage), not because we lacked grace in our movements, or articulation in our voices, but simply because we had little too much melanin. Did not do too much harm to my psyche, though (I am dark and thick skinned, I guess).

A sometime Sunday activity by girls in my hostel, was reading aloud the Hindu matrimonial ads, each girl would pick her community section and read it out, to the sneering rest. We concluded, here within the pages of Hindu matrimonial ads was the sign that Indians were indeed unified. No matter what caste, profession, age, or whatever, they all sought a FAIR girl.

As I follow arguments all over the world about objectifying women’s bodies and its effects, the manner in which Valli objectified, her would be daughter-in-law, always amuses me. For the sheer counterpoint it brings to the prevailing notion of a Nation obsessed with light skin. Then again, Valli spoke about her community, probably there are more Indians out there who are not terrified of the ‘pigment’. Just that their voices are not in all the noise that gets heard.

Bleeding out in the thirties

Attended the book reading of ‘Mathematics of sex’.

 The book ought to be valuable for all interested in the gender question though the data is specific to the US, issues dealt within it should be relevant anywhere. Definitely contains lots of thinking material for parents with girls.

The review goes something like this: 

Nearly half of all physicians and biologists are females, as are the
majority of new psychologists, veterinarians, and dentists, suggesting that
women have achieved equality with men in the workforce. But the ranks of
professionals in math-intensive careers remain lopsidedly male; up to 93%
of tenure-track academic positions in some of the most
mathematically-oriented fields are held by men.

Three main explanations have been advanced to explain the dearth of women
in math-intensive careers, and in The Mathematics of Sex, Stephen J. Ceci
and Wendy M. Williams describe and dissect the evidence for each. The first
explanation involves innate ability--male brains are physiologically
optimized to perform advanced mathematical and spatial operations; the
second is that social and cultural biases inhibit females' training and
success in mathematical fields; the third alleges that women are less
interested in math-intensive careers than are men, preferring
people-oriented pursuits. Drawing on research in endocrinology, economics,
sociology, education, genetics, and psychology to arrive at their own
unique, evidence-based conclusion, the authors argue that the problem is
due to certain choices that women (but not men) are compelled to make in
our society; that women tend not to favor math-intensive careers for
certain reasons, and that sex differences in math and spatial ability
cannot adequately explain the scarcity of women in these fields. The
Mathematics of Sex represents the first time such a thorough synthesis of
data has been carried out to solve the puzzle of women's
underrepresentation in math-intensive careers.

------

Here, I am trying to put down the highlights of the more interesting part of the reading -the Q and A session with authors Stephen and Wendy. 

Audience: Maybe two men and many women and girls who don’t need a book or statistics to tell them what they live through as most came from math intensive departments. They were there to confirm or contest the major observations in the book.

Wendy: It is a non issue with lopsided numbers in any area as long as it was because women made an informed decision about not being in those careers, however it has to be analyzed and rectified if the numbers reflect some unconscious and conscious biases towards making and sticking it out with these careers.

Stephen emphasized that girls were better or equal mathematicians right through school, and the first drop  in numbers begins in the choice they make for undergraduate courses, the ones who persist and opt for math intensive graduate courses continue performing just as well as the boys. After Ph.D, females are still on par with their male colleagues in job placements, renumeration, publishing, advancements etc. However, in their thirties a major bleeding out of females from math intensive careers happens.

Wendy took over to say, the need for having a family  and unwillingness to relegate childrearing to third party (nannies) is one of the big reasons for this age/stage specific drop out. Analyzing this it is evident that women cannot postpone their decision to bear children if they want to avoid infertility issues with older age. However, this period also critically co-incides with the time when high productivity is expected of young faculty and women take the drastic decision to drop out of careers that they had invested and excelled in all along. Usually never to get back to the system.

Is this an individual loss or loss to the country? The country has invested equally heavily in the training of these women and just when they are about to make a contribution, they reach this impasse. The female attrition is a big loss to the country just as it is to the personal.

Responses that I recall which were interesting, amusing and insightful:

1) A girl from math dept: is there data to show fall in female representation as one goes higher in heiarchy of elite institutes? if the usual explanations don’t account for this, would it indicate sexism is more prevalent in these places?

Others from the same dept : “Of course !”

2) What about non math-intensive careers, why is there no drastic fall there, the biology and early to mid-career demands for high productivity must exist for say law? How have the women overcome this?

Authors answer: Those careers are equally demanding and one does see a fall in the highest levels and few women make it partners, yet such jobs seem to be a little more friendlier to decisions of family and work. And Wendy wondered if it has also to do with female preference for careers that provide an interface with people, making it bearable to hang on in tough times, unlike  math-intensive careers which can be isolating. 

(I found the answers unsatisfactory. None of this explains 93%  male domination.)

3) Another student from math dept, detailed how she started to see fewer and fewer females as she went into higher levels. And contested the data in the book that there were equal number of females at the graduate level. She said in her experience she found herself usually among the very few or sometimes the only one.

Response from a much older faculty: “Looks like little has changed from my time ” to the younger women’s chuckling and sound of weary laughter at all these revelations!!

4) A male student: How come motherhood becomes so important that women take such decisions, the man is the parent too, why does he not have the same response?

Authors: It is changing to some extent.

A mother of 1 year old: “Have to run to pick up my baby (it was after 5.30pm), but want to say my bit, something happens post childbirth, maybe hormones or something that clicks into the mother not the father.” 

Student to this:” Really? Interesting! what hormones does one need to clean the bathroom?”

Wendy: When women give up the decision to have families/children then they are exactly like their male colleagues, so none of theories on brain apititute, biases etc are needed.

5) Question: In the 6% of women who have managed to remain in their careers and reach the top positions, is there data on how many of them chose not to have families and how many have families?

Authors: No clear data, but most of these women are non American, immigrants from European countries, where math ed. is always a push. So, once identified as good in math, the entire system gets them to focus only to enhance their aptitude in it.

Response to this: How does that explain the US having lower numbers of women excelling in math?

Wendy: That is a paradox, one would expect women from more patriarchal societies (Turkey), with lesser freedom to make choices would lead to them not taking up math-intensive careers but the data shows otherwise. One wonders if when presented with choice, women inherently choose what is more satisfying of their need to be in non-isolating careers? 

Indicators of solutions (from random reading over the years):

Studying department structures and cultures-

Departmental attrition data from one state show that the difference between male and female rates of undergraduate attrition from computer science varies by institution. This analysis suggests that departmental factors are important in attrition from CS. Some CS departments inhibit female persistence at the undergraduate level while other departments promote persistence. The observed variation encourages research that compares departmental characteristics such as structure and culture, and relates them to departmental outcomes. Shifting the research focus to departmental characteristics and outcomes will identify effective methods for retaining women.

By taking a hard look at work-family policies-

Employee Assistance Plans, dependent care flexible spending accounts, and emergency child care are associated with increases in the percentage of associates who are female.  Second, these policies are linked to reductions in the turnover rates of associates.  This, combined with the first finding, indicates that work-family policies help retain female employees. Overall, these findings suggest that firm provision of work-family policies can play an important role in retaining female employees without hurting firm profitability. 

Additional useful material is here