Driti Wadwa’s cover illustration
An informal discussion with an educator friend in science a few years ago on the entry into a classroom of the school and the conduct of a social experience asking students to “draw a scientist”, was fascinating as a concept.
The activity and the result were a revelation whenever I entered a new classroom. It has become my favorite icebreaker over time when I meet young students about to choose their majors.
The first experience that I facilitated took place on a brilliant winter morning in January 2022 in Jharkhand, India. This memory is clear because after having informed the activity, a deafening silence followed for the next three or four minutes. A lot of around 90 boys and girls passionate about science could not imagine a scientific woman. Had a broken heart.
Over time, more classrooms and other drawings have contributed to the stack of white leaves on my study table. These images “draw a scientist” could easily be separated:
- Definitive male scientists drawn with curly hair, laboratory heads and glasses, and / or
- Male scientists ambiguous with longer hair, shirts nestled in bell -style pants and a pen inside the small pocket on the left side of the upper body with flat torso.
I continued to have my heart broken until February 2025, by another brilliant morning in a public school in Karnataka, India. There were more girls in this class, with a lot size of about 60 and around 10 boys in total.
Five hands raised when I asked, “Please pass it out if your drawing / sketch looks like something different from a male man or scientist.” A student had sketched a person in a ponytail and bracelets, and another included curly hair in shoulder length, earrings and a small black point on the forehead. A real moment of pleasure was to attend a scientific woman in a burqa and a mask drawn by the third student. My “Eureka moment” of hope!
Representation of a male scientist by the majority of students
A secondary student, Bharati, represents a scientific woman
A student in South India sketches a scientist carrying a burqa
The theory “Draw a scientist”, when it is tested in different contexts, tells a story in unison: the chances that students attract scientists are minimal. I take into account a set of data of around 5,000 students in the past three years that have participated in the experience.
This story often reminds me of my high school when the sciences were presented to us. I do not remember having fallen in love with the notions of science or the approach. Some of these moments were also felt abnormal, because boys and girls were united in different classrooms, because the reproductive biology and anatomy subjects were in a hurry.
It is difficult to deduce what has changed since then. However, my documentary trip to contemporary stem students, entitled Sanrachna: become women in stemcame to life in 2022. The project allowed me to return to classrooms in India and to try to discover sexospecific prejudices as scientific subjects are introduced in secondary schools.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-by2ofbombw
It remains a lot to cross, because amplifying young voices with narration becomes hope towards equity. As a teacher said it pleasantly while I interviewed him for the documentary, “the first step is to recognize that there is a problem.”
I imagine that classrooms are the canvases so that the wings of imagination can attract stem careers in all nuances. One day, the “drawing a scientist” activity will become redundant. Until then, our voices in science are looking for more classrooms in which they can resonate.
