THE TIMES OF INDIA, NEW DELHI 00 TIMES EVOKE SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2020 ‘The sky is for everyone — exploring

Redefining ‘Her’ he world is full of stories. And one vital the unknown is thrilling to me’

story is that of women, challenging the Getty Images Tconstricting roles conventional socie- Sara Seager is an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at the FROM HER EYES: Nasa’s Christina Koch ties routinely place them in. These roles, completed the longest ever spaceflight based on both traditional and commercial Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Described by — 328 days — by a woman astronaut. ideas of ‘a woman’s place’, have not been sim- Nasa as ‘an astronomical Indiana Jones’, Seager is leading Returning to Earth last week, Koch, who ply metaphorical. They come with real bar- was also part of the first all-female riers to women’s growth, even in fields which the search for -like planet. Seager spoke with spacewalk, reportedly said her effort seem to be above gender roles. Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke about what drives her was historic, but she had also deeply For instance, numerous studies find wom- missed raindrops, wind and the sea en professionals, from doctors to software exploration, why other planets are vital — and how she has engineers, science PhDs to filmmakers, earn navigated a field dominated by men: ferent projects searching for a new substantially less than their male counter- Earth but my favourite endeavour in parts. Women business executives can report- What got you interested in astronomy? thing I loved — astronomy, which is ap- this is the Starshade project. This is a edly earn upto 45% less than men while the The sky is for everyone. Even in a plied math and physics — and it would giant specially-shaped screen, tens of participation of women in fields unrelated to city, the Moon and planets such as Ve- be foolish to pass up the opportunity to meters in diameter. Starshade will be gender is met with strong resistance. Even as nus and Jupiter are visible, shining follow my dream. The problem was my attached to its own spacecraft and it’ll we marked the International Day of Women brightly. I always loved the night sky. dad, whom I adored, told me to get a prac- fly in formation with a space telescope, and Girls in Science this week, the United When I was a child, I saw the full moon tical job, to be able to financially support nearly perfectly aligned at tens of thou- Nations has found fewer than 30% of the following me as my dad drove me in his myself and ‘not rely on any man’. I strug- sands of kilometres of separation. Star- world’s scientists are women. car. No matter where he turned, the gled with the choice, but I ultimately known, and find your own answers, us- because humans have always won- shade will block out starlight, so only Yet, this is a story of triumph for many moon was always there! A big mystery decided to pursue astronomy. ing observations and computer models, dered ‘Are we alone?’. The fact that we planet light enters telescopes. Starshade women, historically and in the present, have for a small child. I saw the moon through fascinates me. Most of our Earth has can answer this question with state- was conceived of in the 1960s. In 2013, I refused to let such barriers stop them from a telescope for the first Nasa today calls you an ‘astronomical been explored. However, exoplanets of-the-art astronomy tools is amazing! was asked to lead the team. There is also redefining their own lives. Indeed, in just the time at an ‘astronomy Indiana Jones’. What is it about new are completely unknown. We are not quite at the ‘finding signs the MIT-led Nasa mission TESS. last year, the world has seen women astro- party’. Wow, I thought — I planets that fascinates you? Life beyond Earth fascinates me of life’ stage, but the astronomy com- Launched in 2018, this searches for nauts conduct the first all-female spacewalk, had no idea the moon was The idea of exploring, of ‘seeing’ munity is finding rocky planets with transiting planets — those seen in front increasing numbers of women joining ‘hard its own whole world. something for the first time, is abso- orbits that imply the planets are ‘hab- of a star. TESS also studies smaller, science’ fields while women have taken the When I turned 16, I lutely thrilling to me. The con- itable’ — not too hot, not too cooler red dwarf stars for rocky planets. lead in the global struggle to limit further took a physics class — a cept of being able to ask A Search For New Worlds cold, just right for life. I help run TESS and at MIT, our job is damage to Earth and mitigate climate change. defining moment oc- your own questions, to find planet candidates. How can life be deciphered Significantly, as women rise above so- curred. The teacher held about something What is an exoplanet? Describe your work on an exoplanet? ciety’s status quos, they are also redefin- a plywood board with a completely un- All the planets in our solar system searching for a As a woman scientist, how have you man- ing how they view themselves as human giant hole cut out. The students had to orbit around the Sun. Exoplanets are Knowing the time between each transit ‘new Earth’? aged in a field dominated by men? beings. Many celebrate feminism’s role in shoot a spring across the room. We had planets that orbit around other stars. helps astronomers understand how far I have dif- Surprisingly, I had little resistance helping them understand their own to measure the ‘spring constant’ and use Why are they important? a planet is from a star — this points to the during my studies. I think I (acciden- strengths. But many are rethinking femi- equations to predict what angle to shoot Certain planets discovered by Nasa’s Kepler temperature on the planet. Crucially, if an tally) chose mentors who had daugh- nism as well, pondering over whether the spring, based on the distance from spacecraft, launched in 2009, turned out to be exoplanet has the right temperature conditions, it ters. They wanted their own daughters male aggression can be countered by pos- the plywood board. rocky planets located at a signifi cant distance could contain ozone, carbon dioxide, oxygen and water to succeed, and perhaps such thoughts ing female versions of the same. It is such I was shocked that my spring went from the star they orbit. Conditions on these in its liquid form — signifi cant for supporting life. were transferred onto me. behaviour that has led the world to greed, through! The concept that we can write planets, and their distance, creates what scientists How many exoplanets have been discovered? There have been snide remarks wars and the abysmal climate scenario we equations to describe the world around call a ‘habitable zone’, one where life may be possible. In 1992, astronomers found the fi rst planet-sized masses from peers and professors, but I was now face. Should such behaviour be rep- us was transformative. around pulsar PSR1257+12, which is located 1,000 light years able to ignore them. Recently, I have licated, or should these modalities of What got me interested in astronomy How are exoplanets studied? encountered gender-based bias. Now The Kepler mission studies exoplanets using the ‘transit away from Earth. In 1995, the fi rst-known exoplanet came to power themselves be questioned? was the idea that we can study objects light — this was a Jupiter-like gaseous planet found near the I’m older and not perceived as a daugh- The dilemma is faced by millions of wom- in the night sky using physics equa- method’. As a planet passes in front of a star, its path is ter-type but perhaps as a threat. I have called a transit. In this movement, the planet blocks a small sun-like star 51 Pegasi, located just 50 light years away from en globally — and their search for answers is tions. This is an amazing idea — that Earth. While the Kepler mission has discovered several planets, also been at high-profile events where profound. We bring you vignettes of the bril- we can use equations and models to portion of the star’s light. Scientists can decipher the change women in general are just treated Nasa’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission is liance created as women reimagine their own understand mysterious, very distant in the brightness of a star thereby when a planet transits with disrespect or ignored. I have not searching for planets close to the nearest and brightest stars. selves, while they remake ‘a man’s world’. objects. I realised I had found some- before it. This can help them understand the size of the planet. yet figured out what to do about this. Research: Nasa, National Geographic, space.com

But globally, don’t girls have much less access to mobile technology? Portraits of Power: ‘Teenage girls will be the next wave online — That’s a very important ques- tion. We’ve done ground-breaking Women Leading the Change research with the Vodafone Foun- this is a huge untapped opportunity for growth’ dation here. Globally, boys are 1.5 HEDY LAMARR times more likely than a girl to The famous Hollywood actor was also an own a phone — but, in the last inventive genius, credited with having pioneered is CEO of Girl Effect, an international NGO three years, the number of girls Jessica Posner Odede the technology for WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth working with adolescent girls, using digital technology. Speaking to Making Online accessing a phone has tripled. And in the next three years, it’s going communication systems. Born in 1914 in Austria, Times Evoke, Odede discussed the challenges rural girls face globally, Inclusive to triple again. Hedy’s world was shaped by her father who encouraged her to think about how machines using social media to distribute life-altering information — and why Across low- and middle- Today, even in rural India, girls may not own their own phone. But worked. Hedy later achieved Hollywood corporates should back the efforts of girls going digital: income countries (LMIC), success, but kept creating innovations like reportedly 313 million fewer they’re borrowing a phone, from Courtesy: Girl Effect their mother, brother or friend. wings enabling faster speeds on airplane women than men use How did Girl Effect (GE) come about? What are the different technologies Girls in India, from the lower end jets (famously inspired by studying fi sh mobile internet a Well, GE has been a pioneer in you’re using? — of the socioeconomic pyramid, are and birds). During WWII, helping Allied the last 15 years, in understanding Well, young people today are on gender gap of 23% getting online at least twice a week efforts, Hedy invented ‘frequency hopping’ and investing in adolescent girls. their phones because they want to The gender-based — and consuming at least six hours spectrum technology, allowing torpedoes We were started by the Nike Foun- be where things are happening — mobile gap is largest of video content. to reach targets effi ciently. Hedy was only dation and recently, we’ve become that’s online. So, we create a con- in South Asia, where posthumously inducted into the National an independent non-profit globally. tent experience, giving them more women are 28% less You mentioned corporates. But don’t Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014. Her invention We are driven by this idea that than just information — we get to likely than men to even corporates also create constricting is widely known as the ‘mother of WiFi’. adolescent girls globally were sim- their aspirations. own a mobile gender stereotypes? ply not a part of the world’s conver- If you imagine a young girl in In India, over 70% internet us- Mobile internet use sations or of the world’s develop- the outskirts of, say, Jaipur, per- ers today are men. Less than 30% JOAN CLARKE ment agenda. Part of our earliest haps the first girl in her family to by women is impacted women are internet users now — innovation was thinking of how to make it to secondary school, she by factors like literacy, but this is also the area of future Working alongside the famous cryptanalyst Alan Turing in WWII, Joan show the world that if you change doesn’t have anyone to guide her, affordability, safety growth. In the next three to five was the only woman code-breaker decrypting German messages. the life of an adolescent girl, you her parents don’t know how to help and security years, this is where a vast un- Having attended Cambridge University, Joan won a double fi rst-class degree in Mathematics, but she was denied a full degree which was, also change her community and the her… she feels lost. Very alone. online and get answers to ques- Yet, adding more women tapped opportunity exists. Young until 1948, awarded only to men. Her mathematical abilities world at large. We’re therefore reaching girls tions they often can’t ask anyone. to the digital world could adolescent girls are going to be the were so outstanding though that she was recruited to be GE works in over nine countries on YouTube, TicTok, WhatsApp, In India, we’ve launched our reportedly boost mobile next wave coming online. part of the government’s code and cypher department, today, including the US and the UK, Instagram, Facebook and SMS. platform ‘Chhaa Jaa’, targeting operators’ revenues by about So, corporates should empow- set up to break encoded German messages sent via the Tanzania, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Ma- We’d love to see young girls taking adolescent girls. We equip a girl $140 billion by 2025 er their decision-making, also lawi and Nigeria. We also have a control of their futures. They need with knowledge on how to keep because it’s good business. This Enigma machine. Initially given only clerical work to mobile platform available in over to understand health. They need to herself safe, acquire skills, even It could also add $700 billion is your next consumer frontier. do, Joan soon began contributing to the code-breaking 60 countries. We bring together the know how to stay in school. How tell her parents, ‘I want to enrol for in GDP growth across low and So, you should enable them to project. Her talent saw her rise to the top of the crucial war power of young people wanting to to start earning and saving. a particular vocational training middle-income countries have much better lives by know- mission, but owing to her gender, she remained paid less change things about themselves So, we create videos which are course’, when her parents think, ing how to study, get a job, learn Research: GSMA Global Mobile Gender Gap Report than her male colleagues. and to change their lives. almost like a big sister. Girls come no, she should just get married. 2019, Brookings Institute, The World Bank and earn. RACHEL CARSON THE MINDS OF An American marine biologist, MANGALYAAN Rachel’s writing opened the eyes Led by multiple women ‘I don’t want to be the strong female lead’ of the world to the dangers of scientists like Ritu Karidhal, environmental pollution. A brilliant India’s Mars Orbiter Mission In pop culture, women are often objectified and disposed of. But even the alternative leaves much to be desired researcher, Rachel broke new ground or ‘Mangalyaan’ became with her 1962 book ‘Silent Spring’, deeply inspirational. Its Brit Marling ing female gendered bodies. We are annihilat- outlining how the Earth’s ecosystem team took just 15 months Women in Hollywood: far from Centre-Stage ing the feminine as a force wherever it resides was at collapsing point due to from its announcement moved to to become an ac- — in women, in men, of the natural world. pollution and pesticide use. Rachel in 2012 to implement the tress at 24. These are character descrip- Because what we really mean when we say faced threats from the chemical complex project. The fi rst tions of roles I read for: “thin, attractive, we want strong female leads is: “Give me a industry and criticism from political such mission to successfully I Dave’s wife”; “robot girl, a remarkable man but in the body of a woman.” and media quarters for being ‘overly send a satellite from Earth’s feat of engineering”… After a while, it was It’s difficult for us to imagine femininity emotional’. However, she orbit into Mars’, this cost hard to tell the greater source of my depres- 12% 20% 26% 2% itself — empathy, vulnerability, listening — as remained resolute about $70 million compared sion: that I could not book DIRECTORS WRITERS PRODUCERS CINEMATOGRAPHERS strong. When I look at the world our stories and contributed to a similar Nasa mission at a part in a horror film have helped us envision and erect, these are further data to back $671 million. While women where I had three lines Source: Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film the very qualities that have been vanquished her assertions. Her are reportedly around and died on Page 4, or that in favour of an overwrought masculinity. writing stood the test 20% of the Indian We live in a world that is a direct reflection I don’t believe the feminine is sublime and I was even auditioning to of time and ‘Silent Space Research play these roles at all. of these stories. Close to four women a day the masculine is horrifying. I believe both are Spring’ sparked Organisation, I wasn’t drawn to act- are murdered in America by their partners The Pay Gap: A Dismal Show valuable, essential, powerful. But we have public opinion, Mangalyaan’s ing because I wanted to be or former partners. One out of every four A 2019 study by researchers at maligned one, venerated the other, and fallen resulting in the brilliant women desired. I felt it would al- women in America has been the victim of a Lancaster University found male into exaggerated performances of both that banning of DDT scientists have low me to become the rape. Our narratives tell us that women are Hollywood stars earn about cause harm to all. How do we restore balance? in the USA in inspired whole, embodied person I remembered being objects and objects are disposable, so we are more per fi lm than With these ideas in mind, always objectified and often disposed of. and I wrote and created ‘The OA’, a 1972. It remains many in childhood — one that could imagine freely, similarly experienced listen deeply and feel wholeheartedly. In the ‘hero’s journey’, a young man is $1.1m series about Prairie, a blind girl who is kid- a visionary text. more. female co-stars I felt I had to write my way out of these called to adventure, challenged by trials, napped and returns seven years later to the roles, or I wouldn’t find my way in the real faces a climactic battle and emerges victori- Female stars can reportedly be paid community she grew up in. She opens up to world, either. But I was overwhelmed by the ous. And while there are narrative patterns less than their male a group of lost teenage boys. It turns out these MARGARET HAMILTON number of dramatic narratives that mur- for girls’ adventures — ‘Alice in Wonderland’, 56% counterparts — that’s about boys need to hear Prairie’s story as much as The trailblazing computer scientist wrote the software that enabled the dered their female characters. In ‘The Big ‘The Wizard of Oz’ — those are few and far $2.2 million less per fi lm she needs to tell it. For the boys face their own fi rst human beings to land on the Moon and return safely to Earth as part of Heat’, she is shot in the back. In ‘Chinatown’, between, and for adult women, even less so. Interestingly, action fi lms have been kind of captivity: growing up inside the the iconic Apollo space mission of 1969. Interestingly, she hadn’t aimed at the bullet tears through her brain. And con- But there was a new character on offer to toxic obligations of American manhood. particularly gender-biased in pay. the historic feat. Working in MIT mainly to support her husband’s studies, sider the more recent noir ‘Blade Runner me. The Strong Female Lead. She’s an assas- I’ve come to understand what deep influ- Male stars are reportedly paid at least Margaret suddenly discovered computers. There was literally no software 2049’ where the holographic femme fatale is sin, a spy, a soldier, a superhero, a CEO. Acting ence a narrative has. Stories inspire our ac- more than engineering in existence when she stepped into an unknown world. Her deleted and the remaining women are the Strong Female Lead changed who I was tions. They frame for us existences that are brilliance was remarkable and she was soon ready to help Nasa’s moon stabbed, drowned and gutted like a fish. and what I thought I was capable of. Training $1.8m female stars and are not possible, delineate tracks we can mission. Interestingly, Margaret Even the spirited Antigone and Joan of to do my own stunt work made me feel formi- Numerous woman A-list stars, or cannot travel. They choose who we can credits her then-baby daughter for Arc meet tragic ends in large part because dable and respected. Playing scenes where I including Meryl Streep, Natalie find empathy for and who we cannot. I don’t her success — reportedly, once her they are brave and unfettered. It’s challenging was the boss firing men tasted like empower- Portman, Charlize Theron and want to be ‘the dead girl’, or ‘Dave’s wife’. But little daughter, who would sit by to imagine a world in which such free women ment. And it will always feel better to be hold- , have called for the I don’t want to be a strong female lead either, her computer for hours, mistakenly can exist without brutal consequences. ing the gun in the scene than to be pleading end of the gender pay gap, demanding if my power is defined by violence, domina- wiped out all her simulation data. for your life at the other end of the barrel. ‘equal pay for equal work’ tion, conquest and colonisation. Excavating, teaching and celebrating the feminine This alerted Margaret to possible But the more I acted the Strong Female ‘I don’t want my power to Lead, the more I became aware of the narrow However, Hollywood persists through stories is, inside our climate emer- errors during the mission and be defined by violence specificity of the characters’ strengths — and researchers have found the gency, a matter of human survival. The mo- spurred her to write multiple fl awless physical prowess, linear ambition, focused gender pay gap at the movies ment we start imagining a new world and programs ensuring zero glitches. and domination. We should rationality. Masculine modalities of power. remains nearly as wide in the sharing it through story is the moment that She is also credited with creating the celebrate a strong feminine I thought back to the films I watched. I mid-2000s as in the 1980s new world may actually come. term ’software engineering’ itself. began to see something deeper. When we kill Research: The Guardian, World Economic Forum, nature.com Brit Marling is the co-creator and star of ‘The OA’ through new stories now’ women in our stories, we aren’t just annihilat- THE NEW YORK TIMES Research: Encyclopaedia Britannica, New Yorker, UNEnvironment.org, womenshistory.org, Nasa, National Geographic, The Guardian, BBC, The New York Times