Towards an equal world

Too often, women do not get full credit for their work. Isn’t it time to highlight their contribution, dedication and capability?

I RECENTLY saw the movie, Hidden Figures. The movie only premiered in Malaysia this past week, a fortnight or so before International Women’s Day on March 8.

Based on true events, the movie is a narrative of three African-American women who were working with the US space programme in the 1960s. It highlights the negative impacts of segregation and racism, and showcases the true American Dream, where anything is possible.

What resonated most with me, however, is the gender aspect. More than 50 years later, women scientists such as I can attest to having had the same experience as Katherine Johnson (née Goble), Dorothy Vaughn and Mary Jackson.

A couple of years ago, I wrote an article on the “Dark Lady of DNA”, Rosalind Franklin.

Rosalind should have gone down in history as one of the individuals who discovered the molecular structure of the DNA. After all, she perfected the x-ray diffraction technique that led to the now famous Photo 51, i.e. photo of the double-helical structure.

We are all too familiar with crediting Watson and Crick for this discovery. Historically, however, the “hidden figure” of Rosalind Franklin was there, labouring hours in the laboratory and being exposed to radioactive materials required for such experiments.

In Watson’s autobiography, The Double Helix, Rosalind was described as “difficult to work with”, and in a separate interview, another of her colleagues, Professor Emeritus Aaron Klug, described her as “lacking the imagination required ... to have solved the puzzle as Watson and Crick did”.

Due to her untimely death from ovarian cancer in 1958, she missed out on the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine 1962 awarded to James Watson, Francis Crick and – get this – her laboratory supervisor Maurice Wilkins, despite the Statutes of the Nobel Foundation stating that the Nobel cannot be awarded posthumously only having taken effect in 1974.

If one were to read between the lines of Watson’s book, it not only described the nail-biting race to solve the molecular structure of the DNA between Watson-Crick and Linus Pauling’s laboratory, but also provided the evidence of an “all gentlemen’s club” in science. In the same book, Watson later added an epilogue where he made amends with Rosalind, employing her and noted that her abhorrence for a collaboration back then was due to the sexism she faced in the academic community.

However, from personal experience, all is still not well in science. Women scientists are often acknowledged as excellent technicians, but sexism and the gender privilege awarded to men are still prevalent.

Women scientists are expected to work harder – stories of professors who went straight to work from their hospital beds after labour and working through their maternity leaves are legendary, but expected. A colleague of mine once even used her newborn baby as an experimental sample – such is the dedication expected from women scientists.

The women in Hidden Figures conform to the feminine gender identity, are wives and mothers, and received support from their own mothers, spouses, children and each other.

Not all women are fortunate to have such a support system, with single women, women who are gay, women who do not conform to the accepted societal definition of “feminine” and “pretty”, and women who are vocal finding the glass ceiling a lot harder to crack.

It should also be noted that this glass ceiling is not specific to science.

Women scholars in philosophy, economics, religion, and other fields are often not highlighted as much as men, with “all male panels” dominating both the academic sphere and even the political arena, whether conservative, moderate or liberal spaces.

Women politicians are often associated with the work that their husbands have done or how their husbands were stellar political leaders – instead of being credited for the years that they have worked alongside their husbands. Surely the election campaigns can highlight the contribution, dedication, and capability of these women as leaders themselves?

Following fellow columnist Tan Sri Johan Jaaffar’s suggestion, I am currently reading Mohammad Akram’s Al-Muhaddithat on women hadith scholars.

The book highlights that women are equal before God, and even historically renowned as authorities in hadith and other fields.

Yet, when women today, advoca- ted by groups like Sisters in Islam, began to read and learn from the Quran, hadith and learned scholars irrespective of gender, and began to challenge the injustice propagated in the name of the religion, we are vilified and considered secondclass.

Ironically, the colour purple, long-associated with the struggle for women’s rights, recently dominated headlines at the pro-RUU355 rally, where the majority in attendance and all the keynote speakers were men!

In a line from Hidden Figures, Katherine Johnson said, “Women work in the space programme not because we wear skirts, but because we wear glasses.”

We must acknowledge this fact, and encourage young girls to achieve their ambitions and young boys to respect girls as equals.

Beyond skirts or tudung – women are scholars, women are scientists, women are equal.

Lyana Khairuddin is a virologist and a runner, and hopes to # bringbackthe kebaya. The views expressed here are entirely her own.