Women’s success requires redefinition
During the series of Women’s Empowerment virtual meetings held from February 3rd to February 10th, 2021, eminent Jordanian molecular biologist delivered a speech on empowering women in the field of science and technology.
MSTF Media reports:
Rana Dajani, President of OWSD Jordan Chapter and full professor of Hashemite University, made a speech titled “Seeing what everyone sees, but thinking what no one has thought” during the Women’s Empowerment one-week virtual event, held by Women Research Center of Alzahra University in collaboration with the Mustafa
Science and Technology Foundation (MSTF).
Concerning the title of her speech, “Seeing what everyone sees, but thinking what no one has thought,” which is a well-known saying by a Nobel Prize winner, she said “To me this is actually the hallmark of a scientist, but it’s also what makes us human. It’s an innate thing in us that we always want to look around, see what’s new, and think in different new ways.”
“This is a part of our culture, our heritage, and also our religion which asks us to observe and be curious,” she continued, adding “In this spirit, I’m going to try to reimagine what success looks like.”
According to the data she showed regarding the percentage of women’s presence in labor market, she stated that the number of women in different sectors of job market is lower than men all over the world, noting that even though her present talk is focused on science, technology, and innovation, the pattern applies to all sectors.
Aiming to address this issue from the perspective of ‘seeing what everybody has seen, but thinking what no one has thought,’ Dajani said by “adopting the scientific method” she attempts to figure out why the situation is so and what is to be done in order to ameliorate the situation.
Are not women educated enough in STEM?
The first explanation occurring to people regarding these low numbers is that “women are not educated enough,” she said.
On a global scale, the percentage of men and women attending high school is almost 50-50, she noted, but as the women progress to university and then adopt a research career, the percentage declines drastically compared to men.
“But in my part of the world, the Middle East, we have 68 to 70 percent of women in STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics] in undergraduate level, Master’s, and PhD. But the numbers go down when women enter the career track of being academics,” she observed, concluding that “the hypothesis that the low number of women in STEM careers is due to education is wrong, at least in our part of the world.”
Dajani noted that according to this, we figure out that “we are doing something right” that the countries which have low numbers of women in STEM “should come and look what we are doing, maybe take a few lessons, and understand how they can implement those lessons in their countries.”
In addition to this, she said, “this is a call for social scientists in our part of the world to try to study and understand what’s going on so that we can keep on going and take pride in that.”
It was corroborated by the research published in Scientific American and other journals that the “implicit attitudes do not correlate with Gender Gap Index” in Middle Eastern countries, Dajani highlighted, adding that higher numbers of women in STEM indicates “there is something going on in the culture and how women are perceived in the culture.”
The male-defined framework requires alteration
Dajani put forward the next hypothesis saying “Going back and looking at women’s trajectory in their careers in STEM, we see the famous figure of the leaky pipeline.”
In order to understand which group of women leave their careers in STEM, she said after digging deeper and making even more detailed observations, “we saw that it is women who are married and have children that actually start falling off and leave their careers in STEM. This made me think that there’s something going on here and that we need to understand what’s happening.”
As Dajani remarked, if we go back in history, we see that “the workplace as it is today, was actually developed by white men in the West during the Industrial Revolution.”
The framework they established for the work, reflected their roles and responsibilities in life; like 8-5 job, etc. “Unfortunately, when women entered the workplace in the early 20th century, they didn’t say wait, stop, we may be a little bit different. They entered the workplace and tried to mold themselves to this male-centric workplace,” she continued.
“And when I say women may be a little bit different, I’m only talking about one difference: a woman will carry a baby while a man doesn’t. This is a biological difference that has nothing to do with social norms or culture,” she maintained.
Dajani believed that although it would be assumed that the framework of work would be slightly different for women, we subscribe to the same framework and our success is defined based on that framework, noting “who is measuring who is successful and who is not, is still the white man.”
She said even though in order to adapt to this biological difference, many companies have made changes in workplace, such as offering maternity leave, providing nurseries, or lactation rooms at work, and so on, not all companies are doing this.
“So, such measures should be taken to accommodate women,” she said.
Rethinking women’s success
The reports suggest that even in the most gender-equal countries like Sweden, women are not flocking to the labor market; therefore, the problem lies in issues more than women’s education or androcentric framework, which were discussed earlier, Dajani observed.
“This made me to think, as a scientist, that maybe we are asking the wrong question. So we need to take a step back and change the way we look at the problem,” Dajani said, echoing Einstein’s quote ‘We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.’
As Dajani put it, rather than asking how to get more women to the labor market, maybe we need to ask “What do women really want and how do women define success for themselves,” adding “To me this is an innovative approach of approaching this problem,” because the societies always assume they know what women want, while if the women are to be directly asked this question, a diversity of answers will be offered.
She then raised the issue that striking balance between acknowledging biological differences between men and women without discriminating against women because of them, has always been a serious challenge.
Those biological differences, she said, are not only about carrying the baby, but also, later on, “we need to focus on the roles of men and women as parents in taking care of children throughout their early childhood,” noting that “humans have a long-extended childhood compared to other species” which demonstrates the importance of social structures in which parents take care of the child to develop a healthy brain and body.
Regarding this crucial point, Dajani referred to the results of an experiment from Harvard University carried out on Romanian orphans. This research suggested that “the brains of children who have been neglected, not in terms of nutrition, but in terms of social interaction, are stunted, and their social and mental capacities are reduced.”
The interactions between caregivers and children are of high importance and “if we, as a society, define one of our most important goals as producing a better generation, taking care of children properly should be at the forefront,” she stressed.
What key measures are needed to be adopted?
Dajani believes that first of all, we need to make sure that there are policies and regulations in place, and that women have equal opportunities; however, this is not enough.
“We need to have more equality in the members of committees who are implementing these regulations, which means having women at the table in an equal percentage,” she added.
The next step is ensuring that there is no power dynamics; “that everybody has not just an equal place on the table, but also a voice at the table,” she continued.
As we change the rhetoric and ask women what they want and how they define success, we may find a whole spectrum: from women who just aim at nurturing their children to women who want to be CEOs and everything in between, Dajani observed.
In addition, she emphasized, the priorities may change with the passage of time. According to a study from MIT on the graduates of MIT, men thrived in their careers up to the age of 40 and then their career plateaued, while women kept progressing even after 40.
Therefore, “if women choose to do something in a particular stage of their lives, that doesn’t mean that they’re stuck in that forever. We can always change our minds depending on our priorities and our biology,” Dajani contended, stressing that this issue must be noted, because one of the criteria for most scholarships, fellowships, and similar opportunities is that you have to be younger than 40.
According to Dajani, they are adopting the male-centric model that if by 40 you are not successful, you will not be successful afterwards, which is very different from women because a woman may choose to have her baby earlier and then enter the labor market or vice versa.
Hence, “this flexibility and freedom in choosing what we want as women is very important if we are to give equal opportunities to women,” she continued.
She said that as a female scientist, she has realized that in order for women to advance in their careers, two things are lacking: the first one is mentoring. As women, “we don’t have enough time to discuss our scientific ideas and share them with colleagues and get feedback,” she observed.
“I created a mentoring program for female scientists which I called Three Circles of Alemat. I used the word ‘Alemat’ phonetically so that the world would know in Arabic, in our culture, and in our heritage, we have a word for female scientist,” she said.
It is basically a program where female scientists are paired together. “This dyad is not just for professional development but also for personal development. The relationship is very flexible and fluid,” she explained.
The other thing we need to do is showcasing role models, she said, explaining “we need more and more role models who look like us, dress like us, and speak like us for our young generation—not just for girls but also for boys, because they need to see role model women so that they will support the progress of their wives, daughters, or sisters,” she said.
Dajani then talked about her book on redefinition of women’s success, “Five Scarves: Doing the Impossible—If We Can Reverse Cell Fate, Why Can't We Redefine Success?” which is reviewed in Nature journal.
She concluded her speech by a Hadith from Prophet Muhammad
on how every deed counts, even if it’s little, adding “You have something to give your society. Based on chaos theory in physics or butterfly effect, change can happen even though it may start small.”
“This is the approach we need to adopt in order to tackle the challenges of the 21st century which range from global health to water, environment, food, education, security, poverty, etc.,” she maintained, emphasizing “It requires us to work together in teams, have the courage to be innovative, and do interdisciplinary research because innovation happens at those boundaries between disciplines.”
Rana Dajani was a participant of the 5th Science and Technology Exchange Program (STEP) held in Karachi, as well as the keynote speaker of the 7th STEP held virtually by the MSTF in May 2020.
