International Women’s Day – Damayanti Bhattacharya, CEO of Maker Bhavan Foundation

“The global maker movement has recently made inroads into India. While higher education, specifically science and engineering education, is slowly but steadily becoming modernised, some challenges remain the same. Girls and women have traditionally been underrepresented in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) field. While the participation rates are better today than they were a decade ago, the fact remains we need more women in STEM and broader participation of women and gender diversity in learning-by-doing and hands-on ‘Maker’ activities. In other words, we need more ‘MakeHers’, as Intel has creatively coined. Make in India will remain a pipe dream without the millions of Makers and MakeHers at the leading edge of creative technological innovation. Our work at the Maker Bhavan Foundation is to fuel and make this dream a reality. Change happens not by our words or opinions but by our actions. My work as the Foundation’s CEO is to set a living example of the change I wish to see among young girls and women changemakers of the future. They will do an even bigger and better job than anything that my generation has achieved.”