The aim of this chapter is to consider the status of Japanese women scientists. First, the historical conditions of Japanese women scientists have been surveyed, and then their present situation is examined and described. Finally, new strategies for women in science and technology (S&T) in the twenty-first century are introduced.

It is easy to understand why there were few women scientists in the past. The simple fact is that women were excluded from the universities and academic associations. The question is, why are there still so few women scientists now that such discrimination has ended? Institutional equality with men does not seem to be enough for women to be fully active as scientists, even though they have far better circumstances than before; they can enter graduate schools and set themselves up in science if they wish. Why then, in spite of this, do so few women become scientists or engineers?

The fact that women's careers may be interrupted by marriage, childbirth, and childrearing is not a sufficient reason for there being such few women scientists. These difficulties are just as common in other professions. The ‘leaking pipeline’ and ‘glass ceiling’ that women meet in the pursuit of their careers are not problems specific to women scientists. All this suggests that we should consider the nature of scientific knowledge as well as the social problems associated with it (Sonnet, 1995: 8–13).

Gender inequality and segregation have characterised science for centuries. Gender biases has been shown in science in terms of its nature and style, content and practices. Various ideological constructions of gender through different eras have served as barriers to women's access and progress in the sciences. In the mid-nineteenth century, for example, social Darwinists invoked evolutionary biology to argue that a woman was a man whose evolution – both physical and mental – had been arrested in a primitive stage. Women's intellectual development, it was argued, would proceed only at great cost to reproductive development. There was a prevalent myth, which claimed that, as the brain developed, the ovaries shrivelled (Schiebinger, 1989). Women were thus perceived intrinsically unsuited to natural philosophy and those who did show any aptitude were made the butt of savage satires. This attitude however continued, with few revisions, throughout the history of Western science. In the twentieth century, scientists gave new interpretations to the prejudices on women in science. For decades, whether boys' mathematical skills are superior to girls' has been a controversial topic among social scientists. Scientific and mathematical abilities were thought to be written into our genetics.

In most explanations of history and the historical process, the primary protagonist, the human being, is painted as a unique creature, who sets himself apart from other animals due to his ability to perform complex thought processes. The ideational wellspring of human thought is credited, and often rightly so, for man's scientific inventions and complex social organisations. The arts, the sciences, and civilisation itself, is testimony to what the human thought process is capable of achieving. But, at the same time, various examples in human history also go on to mock and negate the very thought process that is credited for human development. Such discrepancies in human behaviour are sought to be explained away in terms of the innate selfishness and brutish instinct that man inherits. It is in this context that the duality of human nature needs to be acknowledged. But an acknowledgement of this duality raises the problem of whether we can assign primacy to one facet of human nature.

It has been pertinently observed1 that of the 193 living species of monkeys, all save one, is covered by a coat of hair. Terming this as an exception, the naked ape, or the self-named homo sapien, it is interestingly observed that ‘this unusual and highly successful species spends a great deal of time examining his higher motives and an equal amount of time studiously ignoring his fundamental ones’.

Quite often, when I try to understand history, I am reminded of the fable of the blind men and the elephant. As each blind man came forward and touched a portion of the animal, his understanding and explanation of it differed. So too with history. A new fact or a difference in perspective can paint the past in radically different hues. Which is the best hue? Which colour would paint the past in its most realistic replication? Is it possible at all? These are questions that doubtless assail most thinkers of history.

With these thoughts agitating my mind, I started examining the canvas of the human past. What I discovered was that the dominant brush strokes of most history writings were confined to political narratives in shades of grey, often to the exclusion or neglect of other colours! That this practice succeeded in creating an almost monochrome picture of the past, did not seem to matter. But it certainly did matter to me.

I often thought that a monochromic reflection of the past may have its own charm. But colour certainly added a vibrancy that carried with it the potential of vastly enriching our understanding of the past. Maybe, this need to allow different colours to complete the picture of the past had set in motion the trend of adding newer perspectives to political explanation. Thus, the emphasis on the study of the economy, the society, history from below, social formation, technology, etc., can be seen as an attempt to add different hues that would add to a more comprehensive understanding of the past.

Science education in most Muslim and Arab countries begins between the age of six and seven and is taught as an integrated compulsory subject to both boys as well as girls. The major science disciplines are then studied separately in the last two or three years of the high-school education (Sedgwick, 2001). Fewer girls than boys are enrolled in high school science curricula. There are various reasons related to gender stereotyping such as misleading perceptions that science and technology are subjects more suitable for boys. Another reason is the failure of the curricula to relate science and technology to the everyday life of women. Thus, there is a self-inhibition among school girls that affects not only the number of young women entering universities to study science and technology subjects, but it also results in the reluctance of talented women in introducing their own values and visions into a working world dominated by men.

Arab countries vary greatly in their culture, traditions, and social system. There is a wide range of attitudes towards educating women at the university level, for example in Egypt, women have attended university since the 1920s, whereas in other countries a university education for women is a recent phenomenon. Saudi women were admitted to formal university education in 1973. Although women have the right to a university education, those in more traditional, rural areas of ten do not exercise that right, whether for social, economic, or family reasons.

The analyses of science from sociological, philosophical, and historical perspectives show that it is socially and culturally constructed in a large measure, and the norms and values of society and scientists reflect in the representation of knowledge. Ideologies of gender, nature, and science that arose in the seventeenth century supported the increasing split between a man's and women's worlds and between the public and private spheres; and supported the exclusion of women from intellectual pursuits such as science. According to feminists, sociologists of scientific knowledge have been slower to recognise that science and technology reflect and reinforce the interests of patriarchy (Harding, 1986). Various studies and surveys done in sociology of science have substantiated that women have neither received sufficient opportunities to be a part of science nor have they got the due credits for their contribution towards the progress of science (Eisenhart and Finkel, 1988; Rose, 1994; Wenneras and Wold, 1997). Women's studies in the 1970s seeking to understand the roots of women's subordination pointed out biology, gender socialisation, economy, sexual division of work, and so on, as various reasons for it. In the 1980s, feminist theorising increasingly questioned the androgynous model of human nature. It aimed at recovering women's culture and critiqued masculine ideology by pointing to the interconnections between women's subordination and the destruction of the environment (Poonacha, 2003). They also highlighted the fallacy of gender-neutrality of science and brought out the gendered norms within the culture and practice of science which act to the detriment of women in general, and women scientists in particular.

What Kohlstedt (2004) opines about the history of women in science continues to be true even in the twenty-first century. Modern science was born as an exclusively masculine activity. By excluding women during its professionalisation, the world of science resulted in the association of ‘man’ and ‘scientist’. Changes did occur, but science remains gendered and social and cultural barriers do stand in the way to women's participation in (and within) science and technology. There has been enormous increase with more women studying science and getting engineering education all over the world. But is there a proportional increase in the scientific professions and faculty appointments, especially at the higher echelons? Although the gender gap is slowly diminishing, increase in the absolute numbers or proportion of women receiving graduation, postgraduation or doctorates do not tell the entire story! Globally, women account for slightly more than one-quarter of the researchers. In 121 countries with available data, women represent slightly more than one-quarter of researchers (29 per cent). Women continue to be clustered in lower academic positions and relatively fewer at the higher ranks. According to the reports by the National Science Foundation in the US, around 19 per cent of the professorship was held by women in the year 2006.

Like most other economies of the time, the Ahom economy too was primarily agrarian. However, one significant difference in the case of the Ahom economy was the striking universality of the agricultural process. As a matter of fact, it may be said that agriculture constituted the primary occupation of all the people during this time. Unlike other parts of India, agricultural activity here was not confined to a particular occupational group. On the contrary, it was common for all sections of the population, including the aristocracy to engage themselves in agricultural pursuits. This fact was succinctly put across in his Observations on the Administration of the Province of Assam by Baboo Anundaram Dakeal Phookun1 where he states, ’… The Assamese, one and all, from the poorest peasant to the nobility of the country, are devoted to agricultural pursuits. In ancient times, the sovereigns themselves had their private farms. In Bengal and other parts of India, tillage is exclusively the occupation of the cultivating class. There is, however, not a single family in Assam that is not engaged in the culture of lands, and every family provides itself by agriculture with almost all the necessaries of life.

This chapter intends to document some of the fundamental changes in American women's full participation into science, changes that will have major impacts on the ‘face of science and engineering’ for decades to come. ‘Demographic inertia’ in this chapter refers to the long-term impact of combined demographic forces on women's representation in science. This chapter highlights the many dimensions of the changing representation of women in US science and engineering (S&E). Using data from two National Science Foundation (NSF) databases – the Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED) for new PhDs and the Survey of Doctoral Recipients (SDR) for the S&E doctoral workforce – it brings together data on the educational background and demographic characteristics of three decades of new PhDs and then examines their careers as described by the data. After considering changes in the percentage of PhDs to women, changes in their labour force participation, and reasons for the greater proportion of female scientists and engineers with less than full employment, I show how these changes have important implications for major career outcomes within academia. The importance of examining achievement within the context of the entire career and to understand the effects of demographic changes on movement into more advanced positions has been considered in a variety of recent studies (Hargens and Long, 2002; Long 2001; Morgan, 1998). The current chapter applies these ideas to rank advancement for women in American science. The results show that there has been a steady convergence, making the careers of men and women increasingly more similar. But, there remain consistent differences that leave women with less achievement, salary, and position.

Though one may argue that the use of the term mode of production has become somewhat clichéd, at the same time, it is a fact that this broad-based terminology does provide an effective yardstick to examine society and social formations. But before hurtling headlong into an exercise trying to examine the mode of production of a society and its corresponding social relations, one should seek to gain an overview of the nature of the inter-relation forged by man with his environment and the manner in which he utilises his surroundings for survival and progress. At first sight, it may appear that the fundamental factor which determines man's relation with the environment and the nature of resource utilisation is largely determined by geographical realities. Interestingly, the cultural idiosyncrasies of a given society coupled with its technical and scientific knowledge would largely explain the nature of resourse utilisation and its redistributive mechanism. In this vein one may examine the observation made by W.W. Rostow that ‘societies presented by the environment around them with similar investment possibilities, involving ranges of risks and degrees of change in existing productive methods, will exploit those possibilities in differing degree.’ In other words, the basic and fundamental connection between the physical environment and man's reaction to it, the ingenuity applied by the society in question needs to be examined in relation to the level of its knowledge and other cultural factors.

In trying to explain the process of change in nature, one often takes recourse to the theory of evolution. Understanding biological changes in species over the millennia, as also their adaptation to a changing environment, is extremely interesting. With regard to human civilisation, the study of man's biological evolution provides vital inputs to the understanding of history. But in deciphering the past, what is even more crucial is an understanding of the human efforts to use the environment to his own advantage, and the hows, whys and whens of the changes he has wrought on it.

The journey of man through the ages, from the primitive stage to modernity, from a creature who did not know the use of fire to man who split the atom to harness its energy, has been a tremendous journey indeed. Would it be possible to explain this transition? Can generalisations be made and patterns discerned so as to adequately explain the phenomenon of change in human history? In the process, would it be possible to identify the motive force that propels the progression of history? These are some of the questions that have been often debated by students of history.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the process of intellectual development, particularly in Europe, was dictated by the search for scientific truths and for ensuring objectivity of knowledge. In addition to this trend of making the study of history a scientific endeavour, another equally important development, as observed by Barnes, was the adoption of a more historical attitude towards the human past and the gradual rise of an idea of progress.

The broad sweep survey of the evolution of the Ahom state supplemented with an examination of tools and technology, production and production relations, unveiled hitherto unfocused facets of its history. The attempt at tracing the evolution of the Ahom state through the various stages of its evolution certainly opens up the possibility of placing it under a distinct category. This could be achieved only after determining its dominant mode of production. This is easier said than done as all attempts at determining the dominant mode of production of a society usually lead to the centre stage of a yet unresolved debate on whether India can be categorised under the Asiatic Mode of Production or it would be in the fairness of existing evidence to categorise it as having feudalism.

Here, it needs mention that the debate about the Indian situation basically takes into account the historical developments of north and south India and does not take into account the peculiar circumstances and specific developments in the northeastern region of the country. It was precisely due to this shortcoming that the original idea was conceived to focus the microscope on historical developments in this part of the country, with particular reference to the Ahom state, and ascertain whether the generalisations that had been made regarding the rest of India would also be applicable here. The question is whether, the Asiatic Mode of Production (AMP), generally dismissed as inapplicable to the rest of India, would be relevant in the case of Assam, or whether the feudalism debate could be extended to include historical developments here.

Given its stature as a transformative influence on society, science is and ought to be an object of intense study. Philosophers, historians, and sociologists devote systematic attention to questions such as what distinguishes scientific from non-scientific knowledge; what is the historical context to great scientific discoveries, such as the theory of evolution or quantum mechanics; and what are the sociological and political forces behind becoming a ‘have or a have-not’ in science. What is conspicuously absent – at least until the mid 1980s – from these studies of science (metasciences) is psychology (Feist, 2006; Feist and Gorman, 1998). This is all the more puzzling, given the fact that philosophers, historians, and even sociologists of science of ten touch on inherently psychological processes in their writings on science and scientists, such as imagination, creativity, thought processes, social influence, and motivation. As recently as 1985, there was little accumulated knowledge concerning topics in psychology of science. As Mahoney wrote in the late 1970s: ‘In terms of behaviour patterns, affect, and even some intellectual matters, we know more about alcoholics, Christians, and criminals than we do about the psychology of the scientist’ (Mahoney, 1979: 349). In contrast, other disciplines like philosophy, history, and sociology have spawned clearly identifiable and established sub-disciplines devoted to science studies. Because science deserves more attention from psychologists, one aim of this chapter is to show how the psychology of science can contribute to important questions concerning scientific and mathematical behaviour; in this case how gender affects interest in and ability towards math and science.

Women and minorities face problems in all stages and phases of their scientific life course. The taken-for-granted norms, the structure of society, especially the relationship between family and work, and the organisation of scientific institutions create a series of interrelated dilemmas for women in science that must be addressed in a comprehensive fashion. The solution surely includes changes in the society at large, for example, in gender relations of family and work that create a ‘triple burden’ for women in science (Gupta, 2002). But there can be no diversion of attention or shifting the blame from science to society. Any action to include women and minorities must start at home, within science and technology itself, rather than waiting for societal or generational change.

When scientists and technologists take up the issues of women in science, typically in response to the concerns about impending human capital shortages, the focus tends to be on the front end of the so-called ‘pipeline’ of scientific career progression. Too of ten, when the issue of lack of women and minorities is raised, the tendency within scientific institutions is to view the problem solely in terms of recruitment. Numerous programmes have been started to recruit students from elementary and high schools, and to encourage women and minorities to take an interest in science and engineering careers. However, many of those recruited do not pursue technical careers or face conditions that do not allow them to perform at their highest level (Lovitts, 1996).