As we sat in our office in the Chemical Engineering department sipping coffee,we saw male professors all over the place. Not a single female faculty!
What struck us first was not the statistics. It was the ominous silence!
There was enough representation of women in chemical engineering classrooms--by every formal metric women were there. They cleared the difficult national level entrance exams,got admitted to the most elite institutions,published papers, earned fellowships and survived the very demanding doctoral programs as their male peers.
Yet, repeatedly,we heard different versions of the same sentence:
“Do not know how long,I can carry this journey.”
This sentence stayed with us.
These Doctoral scholars were not ordinary unprepared amateurs. They were highly accomplished candidates chosen through rigorous means and were in one of the toughest disciplines in India. On paper,barriers seemed to have been removed, inclusive and gender equity policies were in place.But something invisible was still colouring those who stayed behind,who led,who spoke up and who quietly stepped back!
We realized that we were looking for a different kind of barrier--the one that does not get documented as official policies or handbooks.
An internal barrier!
Let’s go beyond the “Leaky Pipeline”
We have always been listening to conversations around gender disparity in STEM, structural problem, hiring ,promotion and reward bias, mentor-ship issues,rigid work environments etc.These problems are definitely real. But we kept asking ourselves a more uncomfortable question:
“What happened after formal barriers began to disappear?”
When we started listening,a clear pattern seemed to emerge.Women were not simply manoeuvring external systems but were simultaneously negotiating deeply internalized expectations about who they were “supposed” to be and almost all of them carried an overwhelming compulsion to constantly prove their legitimate existence in engineering. This was definitely not externally imposed exclusion but something deep,subtle and innately powerful!
The Framework That Helped Us See It
Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence-a form of power so deeply entrenched in culture that people begin to accept unconsciously the social norms as normal truths, helped us make sense of these experiences.The picture started unfolding!
The women we interviewed were encouraged in all respects both at home as well as at the workplace but the millions of subtle signals(leadership is masculine, ambitious women are intimidating, family comes before career, and assertiveness in women is aggression etc) that they had absorbed over the many years seemed to weigh heavily upon them. These messages over time became their internal scripts guiding their moves.
And then internal policing begins !
This became the core of our study.
Listening Instead of Measuring
We felt that listening to what women had to say could give us more insights that what could be obtained from questionnaire survey responses,so we chose to have in depth qualitative interviews that allowed the participants to express and articulate their experiences, emotions and reflections in their own words.We spoke with twelve female doctoral scholars in chemical engineering from premier Indian technical institutions, who were at critical crossroads in deciding whether to remain in academia, pursue research careers, or step away from these paths altogether.
What emerged from their narratives was strikingly consistent.They avoided visibility not from lack of ability but from fear of confirming stereotypes. So they adapted by softening their language, confidence, ambition, even their presence.
This was deeply fascinating because academically these women had already succeeded. Yet psychologically,they were trapped in their own self-perceptions!
The gap between competence and self-perception became one of the most important findings of the study.
The Indian Context Made It Even More Complex
Unlike many western studies, what was striking about this study was that we didn’t hear women complain about hostile STEM environment,instead they admitted being encouraged academically,competing on merit and receiving recognition for their technical competence but despite that many felt pressure to ‘adjust’. Social demands like marriage, children,family care-giving silently shaped academic career decisions. “Too qualified to marry”, this phrase captured something profound.
The paradox:
“Educational success ,a valuable asset in STEM,became a costly liability in society”
The subtle but strong message internalized was, “Society will encourage women to excel academically so long as they adhere to traditional gender roles and expectations”
What We Think This Means
What we discovered through our study was that gender disparity in engineering academia was due to powerful invisible internalized barriers. Women hesitate,doubt themselves and censor themselves.They prefer not to lead,speak or even stay.These internal mechanisms are self limiting and begin even before external systems set limitations.
The situation of self-exclusion becomes self-sustaining and that is the hidden power of symbolic violence!
But This Is Not a Story About Defeat
One of our key observations was that these women were not passive victims of the system.
They put up constant consistent resistance and adapted strategically.They indulged in extraordinary hard work to claim visibility in spaces that questioned their legitimacy,consciously challenged expectations around them and some also redefined success in engineering.
That mattered to us.
This research is not about identifying barriers but understanding the constant negotiation between societal expectations (internalized over many years) and personal ambitions and aspirations to shape their futures
What We Hope This Work Opens Up
Gender disparity cannot be solved through policy interventions or statistical analyses, important as they are. We need to confront the deeper social and hence the psychological architecture that simmers beneath.We need to recognise:
- the normswomen internalize,
- the ambitions they quietly suppress,
- the identities they are taught to soften/ignore/give up.
Because perhaps the biggest challenge is not simply unequal access, but the quiet normalization of self-limitation itself.
So, the more successful we are in challenging the deeply entrenched norms that colour women’s self identity, ambitions and belonging in engineering, the easier will it be to restore equity.
The profound question raised by our work is therefore not:
“Why don’t women stay in engineering?”
But rather:
“What kind of social conditioning makes brilliant women feel they were never meant to stay?”
Contributed By: Gayatri Iyer , Ramajanaki Iyer, Aniruddha B. Pandit