Global Gender Gap Index 2014: 114th

Three women related activities were held in the year 2014-15 in India.

1. Indian Women and Mathematics : 2-4 April, 2015. University of Delhi, South Campus, New Delhi, India. More information can be found at http://maths.du.ac.in/webpage-IWM/symposium.html
2. Young Women and Mathematics : 25-27 July 2014 at IISER, Pune. https://sites.google.com/site/ywmiisc/
3. Teachers Training Programme : 20-24 November 2014 at Vellalar College for Women, Erode, Tamil Nadu. https://sites.google.com/site/iwmttp2014/home

All these activities were funded by the National Board for Higher Mathematics (NBHM), DAE, Govt. of India ( http://www.nbhm.dae.gov.in/ ) to a large extent and the institute/university, where the particular activities took place, also sponsored partly.

Dr. Anisa Chorwadwala, a woman mathematician and a faculty of IISER Pune, India, maintains a website for women related activities, past and present, in India which also gives information about opportunities and some useful link. The website is at https://sites.google.com/site/homepageiwm/ . This webite has a link to EWM and we also mention EWM in all the activities of women and mathematics that we are involved in.

Apart from these, there was a one day seminar held titled “Women in Science: A Career in Science” at the Karnataka State Women University, Bijapur, India, on the International Women’s Day (8th March, 2015) which was sponsored by the Panel for women in Science (WiS), of the Indian Academy of Sciences (IASc). Five women scientists including a mathematician were invited to give one hour talk on their research to encourage women students to take up a career in science. There will be report regarding this in Current Science. For more activity of WiS, IASc see the website http://www.ias.ac.in/womeninscience/. Moreover, there have been special seminars on the occasion of 8th March, 2015, like a common program of DRDO Institutions, National Cell Science Centre, a common program of all the ISRO institutions. There was also an Indo-French seminar on women in science in the first week of March.

I would like to add that in 2014 CSIR-NISCAR (Concil of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)-National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCAIR)), India made a tele-series called `Scientifically Yours’ which comprised of half an hour interviews of Indian women scientists. The series was aired, one interview every weekend from July to October, 2014, on one of the national television channel called DD-Bharati so that it reaches a wider audience. It was also re-telecast again this year. They took interviews of 13 women scientists including a mathematician. The series was made to encourage girl/women students to take up a research career in science by highlighting the journey of successful women scientists. The link to the website of some videos is here: http://scm.niscair.res.in/category/scientifically-yours/ This year, CSIR-NISCAIR is compiling all the interviews in a book and would publish it.

Talking about books, I would like to mention one book `Women Scientists: Reflections, Challenges and Breaking Boundaries’ written by Magdolna Hargittai and published by the Oxford University Press this year (2015).