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BITSian Women -
You go girl!
BY
Himabindu Chitta ('02), Krithika Kalyan ('00), Bharathi Balakrishnan
('00), Deeptha Ganapathy ('95), Aditi Pany ('00) and Dileepan Narayanan
('00)
Introduction
Circa 1981, Meera Bhavan, BITS, Pilani.
Sangeeta Samar (now Patni) found herself one of the twenty girls
"inducted and familiarized" with BITS, Pilani. Her batch was one that
featured 20 girls in a batch of 400 guys. The previous batch had had 16
girls, and around 400 boys. And the earlier batch, an even lesser
number of females. So, what did these girls find in Pilani? She fondly
recollects, “They walked in as girls, older than they ever
were, and walked out as women, younger than they would ever be. And,
being one of them I know, it was great in the meanwhile!”
The bold parents of these ambitious girls did not know that they were
setting a trend: one that would gradually permeate through the middle
class and, in the process, help fulfill the potential of the Indian
professional woman that had previously remained unrealized, fettered by
Indian conservatism. The talented girls took to their new-found
professional freedom like a duck takes to water.
Sangeeta says, “So, we were a real minority. Did that bother
us? No – for most of us, it was exhilarating. To be at a
place were most parents of that time would fight shy of sending their
daughters. After all, 25 years back, engineering was very much a
‘Men Only’ profession. Some of us, including
myself, had to fight tooth-and-nail with our parents to be here and to
study engineering.”
“On campus, we were an ‘equal’ sex.
Though we were unequal in numbers, there was no gender persecution.
There was reason for this – our EEE batch topper was a
female, and so was the previous EEE batch too.”
The signs were already ominous for the parochial lot. The BITSian woman
was enjoying some success; she was here to stay.
Today, generations of proud BITSian women have passed through the Birla
Institute and are now carving a niche out for themselves in the world.
They are those that threw caution to the winds, bucked an increasingly
stagnating social system and persevered steadfastly, absorbing massive
cultural and attitudinal changes and the pressures that came with them.
Some of them even drove the changes, rebelling freely against issues,
unacceptable.
It
was not always easy battling against the tide and society. According to
Dr. Meera Banerjee, ex-warden of Meera Bhawan and someone who has seen
BITS evolve over four decades, the 60’s were strict times.
Girls had a dress code (yes! Sarees with plain borders) and were not
allowed outside MB beyond 7pm. No interaction unless necessary for
academics, was permitted between girls and boys.
In fact,
girls seen to be talking to boys outside classes had to face an
interview with the warden. A few girl students were not allowed to take
on courses in the lunch period since only male professors would be in
the institute at that time and the MB warden in those days believed in
severe discipline.
But
the girls in the 60’s and 70’s, some of whom Mrs.
Banerjee knew as classmates of her oldest daughter, were fun-loving and
spirited. They were never docile, she asserts. Academics were a level
playing field, though social interactions between boys and girls were
limited. Leadership was a quality she admired in a few girls she
befriended. She remembers the strong women who contested fairly for
political posts and fulfilled their responsibilities with a passion.
"These girls helped their fellow students adjust and truly made BITS a
second home for them" she says fondly.
Dr. Raj Singh, a 76 batch BITSian currently doing cutting edge research
in VLSI design in CEERI, remembers that his classmates, though few,
were never inactive. Whether in cultural, academic or sports
activities, girls were always eager and equal participants. He
remembers Pragnya Nimbkar, the only female hockey player in BITS, who
played with the boys’ team for lack of female company!
The number of girls joining BITS increased significantly towards the
90’s, but it was really the IT boom that bolstered these
numbers and dispelled the notion of ‘hard mechanical and
physical labor’ that was associated with the core engineering
disciplines like Mechanical and Civil Engineering. The year 2004 saw
the percentage of girls at BITS rise to nearly 40 percent and in fact,
in the disciplines of Computer Science, Electronics and
Instrumentation, Chemical, Information Systems, Engineering Technology,
MMS and Biological Sciences, it was even higher!
The playing field was level. The boy girl ratio marched closer to unity
and the girls were moving on from strength to strength. Why; by the
advent of the new millennium, girls were regularly standing up to
compete for posts of major responsibilities; the likes of Student Union
President, General Secretary and other key Student Union
responsibilities. And they were doing a great job!
It is really no surprise that quite a few of these uninhibited
achievers have translated their potential to become highly successful
in their professional lives, in a number of different fields. In fact,
some of them have steadily accrued national and international renown.
The Sandpaper team, in this issue, seeks to profile an eclectic
sampling of BITSian women who have carved their own niches in their
respective professions, through the data available to us. In doing so,
we have categorized women for this issue into various professional
fields.
- Entrepreneurs
- Business Leaders
- Academia
- Community and Public Service
- Engineering & Technology
- Creative Artists
Each of the women featured is the definitive BITSian Woman in the
fullest sense: a shining beacon of the BITSian spirit as well as the
modern day woman.
We thank all the BITSians who have helped us in compiling this list.
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