The spirit of International Women’s Day (IWD) is still in the air, and the aim of this contribution is to offer some thoughts over the theme of IWD, 2011.

Each year around the world, we dedicate March 8 solely to the celebration of International Women’s Day (IWD), and this is considered the juncture of global celebration of respect, appreciation, and love towards the women all over the world. This celebration symbolizes wider meaning and is exclusively meant to respect women’s economic and social achievements in the journey towards equality, peace, and development. Choosing IWD theme each year gives the day more special outlook by reflecting on global and local gender issues.

This year, we had the theme- Equal access to education, training and science and technology: pathway to decent work for women -to recognize the fact that access to education, science, and technology is the precondition for women’s greater advancement. Here, I just wonder, is the correlation so simple?

Consequently, let me start this contribution by asking a few questions of my own as I have always been fascinated by the feminist contributions to point out the ingrained gender bias in each body of knowledge. The questions are for that reason: aren’t we aware of the traditions of science and technology and the ways it has made historical trajectory of omitting women? Aren’t we conscious about the age old conventional practices of development that target women not as subject of development but as object of development for socially beneficial outcomes in general? Are we particularly aware of the feminist criticisms in relation to women, science, and technology? Do we overtly understand the interrelated realms of science technology and its nature and the possible ways that it could bring good for women? Shouldn’t we be well aware of the gender bias in pedagogical representations?

For instance, when we argue for ensuring equal access of women to science education and for encouraging women to engage themselves in tech-world, what do we actually mean? Do we want women to be educated in science education that has long history of devaluing women’s knowledge and their existence as half of the humanity?

I remember, my high school science book depicted male body as the standard in Darwin’s Theory of Human Evolution, a body that shows how Homo Sapiens evolved from different species and reached in present form. Of course, I don’t mean to bargain for woman body to be standard here, rather I wonder why women could never get to set standards for human kind. There could be many more examples of pedagogical representations that are essentially gendered in nature and diminish women’s existence as half of the human kind.

By bringing in the aforementioned questions, I meant to consider the pitfalls of making simple correlations for women’s overall development. Of course, I completely agree that women’s access to science and technology is a must for their greater development, and I am very much appreciative and optimistic about the possibilities it could bring for women. However, all I insist on is accommodating ever-growing feminist knowledge around science and technology so that we can find ourselves in a position of better understanding of embedded practices and hit upon best ways of women’s engagements in science and technology.

It is imperative that we engage ourselves in dialogues and interrogate gender bias in science and technology. We have come a long way in terms of women’s struggle for equality, peace, and development, and seen many positive changes so far. Now that we have honored the theme regarding women’s access to science and technology, we are sure to bring some incredible changes in the traditions of omission and value women’s traditional tech-knowledge.  

Women! Be the champion of tech!