NEW DELHI: President Ram Nath Kovind rued today the “distressingly small” participation of women in science in the country and said achievements would be less perfect without gender parity.
He appealed to the scientific community to take “accelerated steps” to promote participation of girl students and women in science and technology.
“None of our developmental goals has any meaning without any gender parity. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) as a body and India has a society has made enormous progress and yet the participation of women in science in our country is distressingly small,” Kovind said.
The President said less than two out of every 10 scientific researchers in India were women and of those who joined an Indian Institute of Technology, just about 10 per cent were women.
“These numbers are simply not acceptable,” he said at a function to mark the platinum jubilee of the CSIR.
Noting that the country’s developmental goals would have no meaning without equal opportunities for women, Kovind said that if this disparity was not addressed, then the country’s “scientific achievements will always be less than perfect and less than desirable. (AGENCIES)
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