Women's Day 2023: Over 500 scientists, PhD students sign Hyderabad Charter to fix physics gender gap

NEW DELHI: More than 500 Indian physicists and PhD students endorsed the Hyderabad Charter that aims to fix the systemic barriers to gender equity within physics. The Hyderabad Charter was drafted by the Gender in Physics Working Group of the Indian Physics Association in 2019 during a conference organised by the University of Hyderabad.

The Hyderabad Charter for Gender Equity in Physics received over 510 endorsements on Women’s Day from physics PhDs as well as over 35 younger scholars assumes significance. The ten guiding principles and 29 recommendations in the charter steps away from “fixing the women” and instead aim to address the systemic barriers within the profession, it said.

The recommendations include transparent merit criteria, equality education at all levels, and self-declaration of professional misconduct investigations.

“The physics discipline in India has amongst the worst gender gaps, mirroring the global trend. While the fraction of women among PhDs in all of science employed in higher education in India is nearly 50%, it drops to 20% for physics, further to about 10% in elite physics institutions, and to single digits in awards and honour lists,” it said.

"Meritorious women continue to be disqualified from being hired as faculty, especially by elite Indian institutions, if their spouse also happens to be a faculty in that institution, and sometimes even if their significant-other works in a different city," the charter noted.

“There is no deficit in scientific productivity or working hours of women scientists, but nevertheless, their career advancement is worse compared to men scientists."

Despite this, mitigating interventions by the government assume that women must do all the caring, and are therefore designed to “help” them, rather than address the systemic discrimination.”

“The fact is, girls win 50% of the governments prestigious INSPIRE fellowships for physics, so clearly do not need to be ‘attracted’. The ‘need to begin early’ becomes an excuse for inaction at the tertiary and professional level,” it stated.

Citing how young women physicists continue to be discouraged by senior scientists, the Hyderabad Charter said: “They continue to say that the women cannot “have it all” because physics is difficult, or that the women should become teachers because they get vacations, and even that the women should pick “appropriate” subfields such as computational physics that will allow them to attend to caregiving.”

The charter noted that women are not given leadership positions because they will not be able to “manage since they have to manage their family”. “To top it all there is pervasive sexual harassment.”