Mothering the next generation of women in science

By Christina Scott
This year, Mother's Day is on Sunday, placing it firmly within South Africa's National Science Week, which runs from tomorrow to next Friday.

An interesting combination, motherhood and science. It's not a well-known pairing, like apple pie and ice-cream. Nonetheless, motherhood and science has been happening simultaneously since the days of Marie Sklodowska Curie, the astonishingly brilliant Polish-French researcher who helped discover radioactivity and who remains the only person - and of course the only woman - to win two different Nobel science prizes. In between, she also raised two daughters, for which there are no Nobel prizes.

Motherhood, for many busy women scientists, is perhaps more like chilli-flavoured chocolate - sweet-smelling, with a lethal kick. It can be done. Marie Curie may be a role model once again: after all, one of her daughters, Irene, went on to win her own Nobel prize in chemistry, 23 years after her mother. And Irene's daughter Helene is, to this day, an internationally renowned physicist.

Good scientists. Good mothers
Closer to home, South Africa is providing lots of its own role models. Good scientists. Good mothers. And given the pressing need for scientists, and the pressing need for the transformation of society, these women often take on another task: mothering the next generation of scientists - especially the girls.

South African Women in Science and Engineering is not just a goal. It's an organisation, website and acronym and all, dedicated to getting and keeping women in science.

"Science is very important for the upliftment of our country and our people," says Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan, the chair of SAWISE, the mother of two boys and a renowned writer and researcher on dinosaur fossils. "I'm particularly interested in women seeing the scope there is for careers in science," says the University of Cape Town (UCT)-based winner of the 2005 Shoprite Checkers/SABC 2 Woman of the Year Award. "Science hasn't been strongly promoted among women and I think it's extremely important that we play this role."

Mother’s Day for some
A young organisation, not all the members of SAWISE will be on the receiving end of Mother's Day, obviously. Some of them are new to motherhood.

Diane Wilcox, a UCT mathematician and prominent SAWISE member, will be celebrating her first Mother's Day. Her son Aidan is seven months old. Diane was in the news a few months ago when she swam for nearly three hours from Robben Island to Blouberg in honour of her father Robert, sent to the island as a terrorist when Diane was still in nappies, and her mother, for keeping them all together.

She likes SAWISE for the wonderful environment it provides "to interact with other excellent, like-minded women scientists" and fully endorses all its plans to encourage young women in the sciences, including the August Women's Day talks for high school pupils and teachers. "You like to do what you would have liked done for you, to have it available for others," she points out in a brief moment between juggling two jobs and parenting.

Éva Plagányi-Lloyd, who leads the SAWISE scholarship committee, is the mother of two daughters, aged nine and five.

Can mummies be scientists?
Born in Durban and now another UCT mathematician, Éva uses her skills to understand what's happening in fish populations. She also does quite a lot of outreach activities, ranging from writing books about sharks, whales and dolphins to speaking at schools. "I love going to talk to the kids. One of the nice things about going to speak at these schools has been a comment to my daughter: 'Wow, your mom's a scientist. Can mummies be scientists?'" she recalls.

In November, Éva will give out R22 000 in scholarships for young women who have already completed their undergraduate degree in science and wish to continue to their fourth year. Half of it will be funded by Element 6, the industrial diamonds branch of De Beers, proving that diamonds really are a smart girl's best friend. This year, scholarships went to Jen de Beyer, a biochemistry student at the University of Stellenbosch, and Tsungai Jongwe, a microbiologist at UCT.

"The honours year is often the toughest year financially for most students, especially those from poorer backgrounds," Éva explains. "We hope they will be role models who will encourage young women to stay in university after their first degree because it does pay off in the long run."

Others aim younger. Julie Cleverdon, mother of Clev Gilliam (5), and current head of the MTN ScienCentre in Cape Town, hopes mothers and fathers will take advantage of their Family Fun days this weekend and next, when kids are allowed in free when accompanied by a parent. It's being done in honour of National Science Week, which the MTN ScienCentre is co-ordinating in the Western Cape with partners such as the Hermanus Magnetic Laboratory, the iThemba LABS particle accelerator and the South African Astronomical Observatory. For Cleverdon, Mother's Day is likely to be very, very busy.

There's a lot of science going on. Similar events are happening at the MTN Sciencentre in Gateway Mall in Durban.

Aiming still younger, Rebecca Felix used her PhD in human genetics to launch Curious Cubs, a weekly fun science lesson for pre-schoolers in the Cape, while on maternity leave. From her home in Crawford in Athlone, she says that the "experiment" has been so successful that she has plans to expand nationally to more pre-schools.

The final word, taken from one of her classes, seems pretty positive for female scientists, from pre-schoolers to professors: nothing holds you down, but gravity.