Author name: IndiaRise-admin

During my medical internship in Bangalore, I often noticed the daughter of the cook in the hospital canteen. She would sit in a corner after school, her notebooks stained with the smell of spices. On the rare occasions when we spoke, her eyes would light up as she described her dream of becoming a doctor. It seemed improbable though, her family’s modest means, the weight of social expectations, and the sheer scarcity of opportunity stacked against her. But the extraordinary happened: her father encouraged her ambitions, the hospital leadership rallied behind her, and alumni scholarships opened doors that might otherwise have remained closed. Years later, she walked into the medical college as the first doctor in her family. Her journey reflects, in microcosm, the transformation we need at scale: moving women from being part of a “pipeline” of talent to becoming powerhouses of innovation and leadership. At 2025’s Hopkins India Conference, I chaired a closing panel titled From Pipeline to Powerhouse: Catalyzing Women’s Leadership in STEMM. It convened four formidable leaders, Kanta Singh (UN Women India), Shereen Bhan (WomenLift Health), Kalpana Kanthan (American India Foundation), and Manuela Villar Uribe (World Bank), to reflect on what it truly takes to create equitable systems in science and technology. What emerged was not a perfunctory conversation about numbers or token representation, but a deeper excavation of the barriers that continue to shape and often constrain women’s experiences in STEMM. Midway through the panel, I posed a simple question to the audience of academics, industry leaders, students, and policy professionals: How many of you have been the only woman in a professional room? Hands rose across the hall. That simple moment captured the very systemic issue we are trying to solve. I was struck by the clarity of voices calling for more than mere representation. We were reminded that safety at home, in public spaces, in workplaces, and increasingly online, remains one of the most persistent barriers to women’s empowerment. Equally resonant was the recognition that empowerment requires financial independence and the courage to risk failure and recovery. We talked about the catalytic role of mentorship and male allyship. Genuine change requires everyone, including men, to challenge ingrained biases, both within workplaces and within families. Yet women continue to shoulder disproportionate caregiving responsibilities and remain systematically excluded from the leadership circles where funding priorities are determined. Agency, as the panelists emphasized, is not bestowed overnight. It demands institutions reimagine their policies and embed gender sensitivity into the very architecture of their operations. Writing this, I am reminded of why this work matters so deeply. Of how we need more ladders that will enable daughters to ascend from the smoky kitchens of subsistence into the luminous laboratories of discovery, carrying with them not just their own aspirations but the untapped genius of entire communities. Empowering women in STEMM is about reshaping the trajectory of science, technology, and humanity itself. So here is my call to action. For individuals, the call is to pursue opportunities for leadership unapologetically and to extend the same encouragement to younger women who walk the path after you. Refuse to normalise gender stereotypes and practise every day acts of allyship — credit the originator of an idea when someone is talked over, invite new voices into familiar networks, and seek out mentors as much as you offer mentorship yourself. Small acts of resistance accumulate into cultural change.  For institutions, the responsibility lies in building structures that allow women to thrive without penalty. This means embedding gender-sensitive policies such as flexible working hours, comprehensive parental leave, and zero-tolerance enforcement of workplace harassment. It also means recruiting and retaining women in decision-making roles so that they can shape funding priorities and the future of science. Beyond policies, institutions must prepare the broader ecosystem — investing in exposure, skills, and career transitions, and ensuring that workplaces are truly ready to hire, train, and promote women. There is a line from Shirley Chisholm that I often recall, about bringing a folding chair when a seat at the table is denied. Perhaps it is time to redesign the table, to build spaces where women are not the exception but the norm, not present by invitation but by right. For empowering women in STEMM goes beyond justice alone, it is about recalibrating the trajectory of the world. When women rise, they do not rise alone; they lift whole societies with them.  

Determination and worry mingled on the young mother’s face as she cradled her one-day-old premature infant against her chest, offering life-saving warmth. In the crowded district hospital in rural Karnataka, where I was posted as an intern, only one incubator was functional, and it was already occupied. Refusing to accept that her child would go without, she fashioned a makeshift incubator using a hot-water bottle wrapped in cloth, a cardboard box lined with her spare sari, and a hand-fan for ventilation. The medical staff, initially doubtful, soon saw the infant’s temperature hold steady. The newborn survived the precarious first week not because of modern machinery, but because a mother dared to innovate with what she had. Years later, I still think of her. I never learned what became of the mother or her baby, but I know she will never be named as an inventor, nor given the chance to cultivate her gift for ingenuity. And I cannot help but wonder: how much does society lose when women like her are denied opportunity and recognition? The privilege of being a woman in science is not one I carry lightly. My own journey, from the frenetic wards of a hospital in Bangalore to the classrooms and corridors of Johns Hopkins, owes itself to a constellation of mentors, institutions, and serendipitous opportunities. Yet what this journey has indelibly taught me is that women in science are not mere adjuncts to discovery, nor passive participants in laboratories. When given the right opportunity,  Women can reframe paradigms, question inherited wisdom, and imbue the enterprise of science with perspectives rooted in lived experience. History reminds us that breakthroughs often happen when women dare to step into spaces that seemed closed to them. In India, Dr. Anandibai Joshi became the country’s first degree-holding woman physician in 1886, carving a path in a time when women were rarely educated, let alone trained in medicine. Fortunately, she had an encouraging father and a supportive husband who helped her achieve these goals. A century later, Dr. Suniti Solomon defied prevailing societal silence to identify the first cases of HIV in India, displaying extraordinary courage in confronting a stigmatized subject and opening the door for an entire field of research and care.  When women are empowered to stride confidently into the domains of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (the now familiar acronym of STEMM), the dividends to society can be exponential. Time and again we witness how women leaders in health research instinctively shape equity and access, invariably asking with moral clarity: who is being left behind? In my own work with adolescents living with HIV in India, I have seen this metamorphosis unfold in front of my eyes: when entrusted with the instruments of science and leadership, girls who once hovered on the margins constrained by circumstance, emerge as eloquent advocates for themselves and their peers. To invest in women is not to fill a gap; it is to expand the possibilities of what science can be and who it can serve For me, the question is no longer whether women belong in STEMM. They most certainly do. The question is whether we, as individuals, societies and institutions, will build the scaffolding for women not just to enter, but to flourish. How we can be the architects of a society that recognizes and nurtures the true potential of women like the young mother of my internship days.  The India RISE Fellowship is one such initiative aiming to empower early-career women in STEMM to discover their inner compass in both research and leadership. To build their confidence to not only transform their own lives but recalibrate the aspirations of entire communities. To cultivate a “pay-it-forward” culture of mentorship that grows into a just and lasting future. This is the future I want to be part of. A future we must all commit to creating. Because when women in STEMM drive discovery, they help the world heal and thrive.