Beating Gender Bias

The 2013 ICTP Prize winner Patchanita Thamyongkit, ICTP staff associate Rohini Godbole and ICTP visitor Rabia Salihu Sa'id are the focus of an article in the March 2015 issue of the leading science publication Nature. The article "Developing world: The minority minority" looks into the how these outstanding researchers made it to the top despite numerous challenges thrown their way.

Thai national Thamyongkit is  a chemist and professor at the Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, who has made crucial contributions to organic chemistry, especially in photovoltaic research; Godbole is a leading particle physicist and phenomenologist who holds a professorship at India's premier research institute, the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India; and Sa'id is a professor of atmospheric and space-weather physics at Bayero University in Kano, Nigeria. They spoke to Nature not only about overcoming the difficulties they faced as women working in male-dominated fields but also about the hurdles faced by academics in developing countries.

All three researchers were at ICTP for its 50th anniversary celebrations, where Thamyongkit and Godbole participated in the "Women in Science" sessions held during the event. Recordings of the sessions (Part 1 and Part 2) are available on the ICTP multimedia page.  Godbole, who has been a frequent scientific visitor to ICTP, participated in SUSY 2013 held at the centre, and in an interview to the ICTP Public Information Office she talks about some of the points touched in the Nature article. Thamyongkit and co-recipient of the 2013 ICTP Prize Yasaman Farzanand also spoke to ICTP about their experiences as women researchers from developing countries.