Strong medicine for women scientists

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Strong medicine for women scientists

Profiling women scientists in Africa

Anyone campaigning for change is often told to put their money where their mouth is. South African government activists pushing for more women in science have reversed the equation. First they award a valuable cash prize to a prominent female scientist (for more details, see below). Then the scientist discovers that she has to be a walking, talking role model for young female students across the country.

The initial awards were handed out last year for the first time by the Department of Science and Technology, with a series of R100,000 fellowships for up-and-coming young women scientists. The winner of the Distinguished Woman Scientist award was University of Cape Town urban planner Vanessa Watson, who walked away with both money and a gold medal.

The first round of the walk-and-talk, named in honour of the late Dr Frances Ames, famous for pursuing the negligent doctors in the death of black consciousness leader Steve Biko, got underway recently at the University of Zululand, tucked into the sugar cane fields bordering the Indian Ocean coastline.

Hundreds of female students, including a few from nearby high schools, filed into King Bhekuzulu Hall to listen to a parade of speeches - too many speeches, some suggested - from university and government officials. Professor Watson, who researches how the most marginalized members of society use cities, congratulated the awards team for recognising one of the softer sciences.

Another highlight came when Rhodes University physical chemist Tebello Nyokong spoke of her work developing light-sensitive drugs which are attracted to, and congregate in, cancer cells. Shine the right laser on the drug-saturated tumour and it gets agitated to the point of self-destruction.

The work requires brains, not brawn, and yet female chemists at the professorial level are few and far between - something the awards and lectures hope to shift, one person at a time.

But interspersed with the science was a tale of a life in which history and society often tried - and failed - to halt a young and curious girl from developing her mind.

Nyokong was raised in Sharpeville, but the family left for Lesotho in the wake of the 1961 massacre. Her Pan Africanist father was a strong proponent of education for girls but at the same time all three sisters were expected to contribute by helping out in the family's construction business, planting, weeding and harvesting the extensive vegetable garden and cleaning the house. Nyokong herded sheep for her maternal grandparents, in addition to her responsibilities as a student, which included maintaining the school grounds and a few classrooms.

"My family was not rich, but we could afford a meal every day," she told students. "Things like new clothes were hard to come by. I walked bare footed to school sometimes. But I grew up being proud of who I am. I never saw myself as a victim of poverty."

Nor was Nyokong concerned, then or now, that her classes were often held under a tree - except when it rained, of course, when several classes would squash into the few classrooms available. The devotion and discipline of her mostly female teachers counteracted the shortage of rooms, which themselves had to be built by parents and churches.

"To me this is a good lesson," Nyokong admitted. "We can learn even in very difficult situation, with dedicated teachers. Yes it would be nice to have good class-rooms, but if they are not there, learning can go on! We were very proud of even out classroom under the tree."

Despite getting "a very good grinding in mathematics and general science" at primary level, Nyokong, like many other potential female scientists, abandoned the field in high school. She followed what other students had to say, rather than her heart.

"We did not have much guidance when we got into high school. It was a general belief that the sciences are hard and are not for girls," she confessed. She realised her mistake two years before matric, and spent days and nights catching up in physics, biology, chemistry and mathematics.

Family needs then took priority over university - often another critical moment in the thwarted evolution of female science careers. But Nyokong's father was very ill, and she worked to help her mother, sisters and new brother for a year.

Although female role models are cited in the awards and lecture series as critical, male support is also needed. Nyokong saluted her mentors at university level.

And when discouraging male lecturers insisted that women needed less educating, "it was too late," she said. "My high school role models had taught me otherwise!" In addition, Lesotho was ahead of South Africa at the time in that university and government policies forbade discrimination in scholarships.

Chemistry was not her first choice. "To be honest I did not know what jobs one would even get being a chemistry graduate. There were no role models in chemistry and there was no career guidance. So like many young people, I wanted to be a doctor."

After her father became too ill to allow either a dentistry scholarship in Nigeria or a medical scholarship in Russia, she decided to become a high school teacher. Then government began to wean the University of Lesotho off its dependence on lecturers from England. "After completing my degree I got a scholarship to go to Canada to study chemistry further as part of the government policy to develop local people as lecturers. By that time I loved chemistry fully, and I began to see that doctors cure patients but chemists develop the medicines. So being a doctor was no longer so important to me. I loved my career path as a chemist!"

While still at varsity, Nyokong married and had two children sandwiched on either side of her first degree. Parenthood is one of the factors that drives women from the sciences, often because the pace of science is relentless but there are few ways of keeping in touch during maternity leave or after two or three years of child-rearing.

Nyokong minced no words. Studying in an openair classroom, fine. No female role models, either in Lesotho or Canada, fine. Juggling motherhood and studying for her Phd and working as a cash-strapped teaching assistant was "very difficult. It was in no way easy."

Some would see these as setbacks. Professor Nyokong sees them as life lessons in hard work and juggling priorities, aided perhaps by the absence of television for much of her upbringing.

She noted a little-known beneficial side-effect to her upbringing: "every little thing you achieve is better than what you started off with, hence, every achievement calls for a celebration!"

But the fights for success did not end with her doctorate. Research was a lonely road. "I had no one to talk to among my peers when things went wrong with my research or when I got very excited about my research. I had - and still have - academic loneliness."

Racism and sexism were additional hurdles when she arrived at Rhodes University. "Clearly students had never been taught by a black person when I arrived, and let alone a black woman. There were some difficulties at the beginning which I soon overcame. But one has to be very firm!"

She warned black female scientists to be prepared to tackle these challenges. "You should know it can happen."

Nyokong's face lit up when she spoke of her students. "I just love them," she stated. "I do not become friends with my students, we keep a distance, but I really support them emotionally. I do not want any woman to go through the academic loneliness that I have gone through."

But science presents grim prospects to the youth. The chemistry first years remain convinced that her six Phd students have no life. "We see them come into the building," they confide. "We don't ever see them leave!" Nonetheless, the lure of discovery remains powerful.

More Information:

Organiser Dr Shaidah Asmall hopes to extend the lecture series to other venues around South Africa in September. The 2004 awards for women in science, which include a special award for female scientists working elsewhere in Africa, will be available soon at the website www.sarg.org.za . Or email Shaidah.Asmall@dst.gov.za .

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April 2004	Profile

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