On the occasion of International Women’s Day, a lecture on ‘Women in Nuclear’ by Dr. Sebnem Udum, Associate Professor, Department of International, Relations of Hacettepe University, Turkey was organized virtually by Amity Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology. In her lecture, Dr Udum stated that business and workplace is a " modern world jungle” where there is competition for resources and survival. This brings forward the feeling of FEAR, which dictates the EGO rule behavior. We come across gendered approaches in STEM ( Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields. The historical narrative is also gendered. The perception of comparative advantage in economics translated into productivity, wherein different genders are better at doing different tasks. The produced knowledge has been that women are more productive in soft skills, men are more productive at STEM, instead of thinking that they are complimentary for a certain task. She also said that nuclear is one of those fields where women and men are complementing each other than competing with each other. Dr. Udum also mentioned the advantages of feminity for nuclear fields as they are hardwired to the mothers, they think about prevention as a strategy to prevent harmful events or threats, whereas the masculine feature is to trest threat as responsive. Teamwork and networking skills are the qualities mostly seen in women because of quickly and easily created bonds. Neat work, punctuality, planning skills integral for a sector where risk management is the key. Women are good at detecting what is going wrong and tend to work towards changing it instead of accepting. Men in leadership positions tend to operate unilaterally or with a small group, whereas women in leadership positions would tend to engage in group thinking.
Another lecture series was organized by Amity Institute of Nanotechnology in collaboration with Indian Women Scientist Association. Dr. Purnima Rupal, Director, Indo French Centre for the promotion of Advanced research, New Delhi delivered the talk on “Effect of Pandemic on Women’s work-life”. The talk covered the difficulty in maintaining the work-life balance experienced by most women in the pandemic. She also appreciated the role of women in India as front-line workers. A brief introduction about Indian Women Scientist Association (IWSA) and its mandates were given by Dr. Rina Sharma, Principal Scientist, National Physical Laboratory and Convenor of IWSA, Delhi Chapter.