AS part of the International Women’s Day (IWD), celebrated on 8 March every year, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), organized a virtual invited special lecture by Dr Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist, World Health Organization (WHO) on the topic “Women Leadership in Science, Health & Society”.

Dr Soumya Swaminathan, former Secretary, Health Research, Govt of India and Director-General, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has also been Deputy Director-General of Programmes (DDP) at WHO from 2017 to 2019.

In her lecture, Dr Swaminathan touched on various issues related to women, their role in Science, Health and Society and also threw light on how during the COVID-19 pandemic women came up and fought the battle in varying capacities. Highlighting the issue of disparity between men and women she said that in the disciplines of Science & Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, globally there are less women than men and that’s why even at the entry-level there are differences between boys and girls. Even if you start with 50-50 proportion eventually it ends with a much smaller proportion of women and this reflects poorly on the society around us. Highlighting the ratio of women at different places she said that women are underrepresented.

Mentioning the 2020 report of the National Academy of Medicine, USA, she said that the US has similar issues with women leadership and science. However, they identified where the gaps are and put in place some systems. She shared the example of NIH that opened an office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. She emphasised that to make long-lasting changes there is a need to have geographic and gender balance while setting up any committee, panel, etc. in Govt or private sectors.

Sharing her experiences she also said that very often women themselves are reluctant to put themselves forward. There are certain signals in society that tell them that men/boys are better at certain things, she added. Quoting various fields where women serve as role models she said that they are few but still young girls get to see those role models and believe that it is possible to do those jobs and aspire for those positions.

Talking about the pandemic situation she said that there was an unequal burden of work on men and women. Quoting an analysis, she said that women research has been more impacted, there has been less output, there have been less grants written, and there have been less papers written because they had to balance various responsibilities.

Dr Swaminathan said, “If you look at other countries where you have huge socio-economic disparities then again the impact of the pandemic on livelihoods has been borne by those who are at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum.”

Raising her concern in relation to variants of the virus, she said that RNA viruses are expected to mutate and WHO has now defined the “Variant of Interest” and “Variant of Concern”. Variant of interest is when the identified mutation is associated with a phenotypic change whereas variant of concern is when that particular variant is also showing either increased transmissibility and increased virulence. Further, she added that with a variant of concern it becomes important to have proper risk assessment and management of people infected with that variant including the use of vaccination. 

“The virus still behaves in the same way, maybe more transmissible, it acquires some mutations but still can be controlled by the same public health measures that we have been using from the beginning,” said Dr Swaminathan. Every time there is a variant of concern you have to ensure that proper investigations are done, she added.

Concluding her lecture she shared a few lessons and said that science is what provides us the solutions and science is going to provide us solutions for all our big public health problems in the future. Therefore, we need to invest in science and institutions; we need a balanced workforce with men and women and also need diversity at each level of decision making. Further, she added that there is a need to encourage school children to take up science. The pandemic has brought science onto the front pages of newspapers/televisions and hopefully motivated young people to take up a career in science.

Another the big lesson she shared was around the health system that every country needs to invest in. Highlighting the tremendous use of digital tools in the past few months she said that technology cannot replace human beings but can only support and be complimentary to improve the quality of the service being provided. India has a huge potential to invest in digital technologies for health care but at the same time keep on investing in resources, she added. Mentioning the importance of genomic surveillance she said that we need a well-coordinated genomic surveillance network in India not just for emerging diseases but for others as well. “I think a good beginning has been made and it should be further strengthened,” she said.

The third lesson she mentioned was the regulatory system as it plays an important role and needs to adapt very quickly in an emergency. “Regulators are very important elements of the whole scientific enterprise. If the regulation of innovation is not good then it can result in chaos and poor quality products. So it’s important to invest in the regulatory systems and to have models and scientific methods as well as the best experts who serve in those regulatory capacities.”

Talking about community involvement for a better response she said that involving communities and particularly women and women groups can make a big difference. She also mentioned that there is a need for global solidarity and collaboration to face the many challenges before humanity. Dr Swaminathan also raised concern over issues like infodemic that need to be tackled.

Earlier, in his introductory remarks, Dr Shekhar C. Mande, Director-General, CSIR and Secretary, DSIR, said that we need to achieve in the coming years equal representation of everyone not only women and strive for equality at all levels.

The vote of thanks was proposed by Dr Geetha Vani Rayasam, Senior Principal Scientist, CSIR.