The Sydney Feminists

    This image shows Bell Burnell as a graduate smiling in front of a radio telescope .   https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23531370-800-finding-the-first-pulsar-set-my-world-spinning/   A pulsar is a rapidly spinning dead star chunk that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation, like the lights on a lighthouse, out into space. They were first witnessed in 1967 by astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell and are one of the strangest objects the universe has to offer. In a controversial decision, Bell Burnell missed out on the Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery. All the credit went to her thesis professors.   Early Life   Born on July 15 th , 1943, in Belfast, Ireland, Bell Burnell enjoyed science from a young age. Her parents encouraged her interest. When she failed a higher learning exam, they sent her off to England where she would have a better chance of succeeding. She excelled in her classes and went to the University of Glasgow to study a Bachelor...

The more I travel and work in various cities and countries, encountering difficulties as a mechanical engineer in a male-dominated industry, the more I am aware of my privilege growing up in a feminist Indian family. At 12 years old, when I had only recently moved out of India, wanting to be an engineer seemed anything but unusual. Of course, it was convenient for me that most parents in India are obsessed with pushing their children towards STEM-based careers. Girls often outperform boys to bag the coveted 1 st rank in the highly publicized senior board exam results, with impossibly perfect grades in mathematics and science. 1 : The toppers of Central Board of Secondary Education final 12th grade exams in 2019, with their grades As I stepped out of India and met the rest of the world, I found myself more and more alone in classes and then workplaces. Research at Open University found that 35% of specialist technology roles in India are filled by women, compared to 17%...

The following poems are taken from a larger collection I composed as a creative expansion to my "academic" work on the Old English text  Wonders of the East. This text is a part of the more famous Beowulf manuscript, which you can read more about here:  https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/beowulf . However, you don't need to be an expert on Old English/ early medieval literature to read these poems. Wonders of the East was only one of many inspirations for these pieces. They are, above almost anything else, deeply influenced by my personal feminist roots. They are stories about the people who inhabit the margins of texts, the peripheries of lands, the outer edges of imagination. I draw strength from these people's resilience and survival. My deepest gratitude to them and all those who have fought the good fight before us.  Image Source:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonders_of_the_East The saintly and savage Cynocephali [1] Call me what you will: Op...

Up until I was ten years old, when my mother choreographed for and taught dance to the kids of the local Indian community, I looked up to one of her students. She was in her later teens and was the star of every show because she was the best dancer in the group. I knew she was studying to be a civil engineer, and she refused to listen to her mother’s advice to take better care of her skin every time she went out into the field for work, making her intrepid in my eyes. After we moved away, my mother unsuccessfully searched for a contact number or an email address to get back in touch with her family for decades. Twenty-two years later (just last month) my mother was finally able to track her down and speak to her. I was happy to hear that she asked about my career and wanted to know if I was still working in mechanical engineering. When my mother said yes, she said, “Good.” Women frequently dropping out of STEM fields is a very commonly acknowledged, and almost accepted, pheno...