Vaccines essential for reducing burden of infectious diseases, says Gagandeep Kang

31/08/2020 1 Comment read Gender, Health & Science

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 31.08.2020 (SciDev.Net): Internationally renowned for her inter-disciplinary research on transmission, development and prevention of enteric infections and their sequelae in children in India, Gagandeep Kang is the first Indian woman scientist to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. She is a member of the WHO’s Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety.

Currently, a professor of microbiology in the Division of Gastrointestinal Sciences in her alma mater, the Christian Medical College Vellore, Kang grew up in a science-oriented household, reading Isaac Asimov. She attended 10 schools in 12 years as her father, a mechanical engineer in the Indian Railways, was transferred across northern and eastern India.

The frequent transfers taught her to be adaptable and learn outside the classroom. She spent time learning on her own with help from her parents. They would visit mines to understand about minerals and chemicals. Her father would bring home lenses, concave mirrors and Woulfe bottles and they set up their own lab and herbarium.

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It was meant to be a ground-breaking year for gender equality, but COVID-19 widened inequalities

24/07/2020 0 Comments read Education, Gender, Health & Science

Suhana Khan teaching children from her extended family in Kesharpur village in Rajasthan (India). Photo Credit: © Bodh Shiksha Samiti

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 24.07.2020 (IPS): Sixteen-year-old Suhana Khan had just completed her grade 10 exams in March, when India imposed a nationwide COVID-19 lockdown. Since then, she has been spending her mornings and evenings doing household chores, from cooking and cleaning to fetching drinking water from the tube well.

“I am really missing school. Nearly half the year has gone and we have no books and no teachers to teach. We don’t know if and when we will be able to resume our studies,” Khan, from Kesharpur village in the western Indian state of Rajasthan, told IPS. The disappointment is palpable in her voice. While teachers at the local government school are supposed to conduct online classes, most of the 350 households in the village have only one mobile phone with internet connectivity, which male members in the family take to work.

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Women leaders must fight gender bias in the system, says Nazhat Shameem Khan

13/09/2018 0 Comments read Climate Change, Gender

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 13.09.2018 (SciDev.Net): Women in high positions must change the system so that every girl and woman can experience equality of opportunity, says Nazhat Shameem Khan, Permanent Representative of Fiji to the UN in Geneva and the country’s ambassador to Switzerland.

Born in Suva to migrant parents of Indian descent, she has had a stellar career as a lawyer, a judge and a diplomat. In every position she worked to remove the barriers girls and women face, be it making the office of Fiji’s director of public prosecutions more inclusive or getting the Gender Action Plan passed as chief negotiator for Fiji’s presidency of the 23^rd annual Conference of Parties (COP23) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

She spoke to SciDev.Net about her sheltered childhood, her struggle to get a job despite having a law degree from Cambridge University, her experience with gender and racial bias as an Indo-Fijian woman and harassment and bullying at the workplace.

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