Being visible: it’s so hard!
After facing few incidents of unfairness, I decided to be more visible. It is a battle for me. It’s not that I cannot talk or communicate, it just feels very exhausting to me. It is far from my comfort zone.
It was my new year’s resolution to be more visible so I said yes to many many things. And by early March, I am tired of my own visibility! I think I will stop for this year. I want to make a note of this feelings so that I remember about it.
I accepted one from Action Aid, Bangladesh — I first said no because it was on a class day; then my former student and current colleague Ashfia approached me. I just said yes. I did not know it had ministers … well, it was a fun gathering and we had important conversations. Although I am not sure about its sustainability. Here I talked about the challenges women face — mostly from the perspective of women in science/ women in computing/tech. It had some views from working women and some from students. We found out from research that there are Social Barriers, Structural Barriers and Policy Barriers for women that impact them at all stages of their professional lives. There are simple cases where students (regardless of their gender) think women are less competent than men. As you can see below along with some background information.
I presented it all with graphs, evidences and quotes from my research. The interesting thing happened in the evening — I got a call from a journalist who asked me about sticks with numbers (আপা, ওই কাঠি গুলি কি? ). It took me sometime to realize he was talking about bar graphs. I tried to explain it over phone and figured out, there is a flaw in teaching our young ones about visual interpretation and analysis.
The next one was at Dhaka University Science Society — a group of enthusiastic scientists invited me over there. Here I vented a lot about how I wished to join University of Dhaka and I was disregarded for being dangerous — “women wearing hijab are dangerous” was the exact quote. It was a lovely afternoon with the young ones. I presented almost a similar picture sharing the challenges women face in STEM area.
Well, today was the final one. At North South University. Here I presented my study I did studying challenges and opportunities women face in technology access, funded by Gates foundation — the Alor Akash project. Here I talked a little about the magical impact of financial technology on women across Bangladesh, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic. It was useful for many regardless of their gender and location (e.g., urban, rural regions) but the access problem impacted the outcome as you may see below. Women had lower access to technology and had less opportunities to learn about technology — often because they did not have enough time to spare considering their heavy workloads. Yes, I jumped around here and there during the presentation as you see below … have a lot of place for self improvement (well, not until next year so I can relax!).
Apart from that, I gave an interview which was featured (with some factual errors) at College of Computing, Georgia Tech site featuring Black History Month. It was a proud moment when my advisor shared it among all of us — felt really good! Here is the link: here is the news on me!
And guess what? I interviewed on a local TV channel (local means NSU TV channel) … this time I found how much I move my hands and felt the desire to take care of my health looking at the double chin from this close! Here is the link: TV interview
Don’t you think I have tried hard enough? Done with my visibility project for 2023. Lots of love.
Some References from my own papers
[1] Ahmed, N., Chowdhury, A. M., Urmi, T., & Jamal, L. (2022). Impact of socio-economic factors on female students’ enrollments in science, technology, engineering and mathematics and workplace challenges in Bangladesh. American Behavioral Scientist, 00027642221078517.
[2] Ahmed, N., Urmi, T., & Tasmin, M. (2020, December). Challenges and opportunities for young female learners in STEM from the perspective of Bangladesh. In 2020 IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment, and Learning for Engineering (TALE) (pp. 39–46). IEEE.
[3] Ahmed, N., Iftekhar, L., Tasmin, M., Urmi, T. I., Ahmed, S., & Motahar, T. (2022). Challenges for women in computing in Bangladesh considering the learning and workplace environment over a period of eight years. SN Social Sciences, 2(10), 227.
[4] Iftekhar, L., Ahmed, N., Chowdhury, F., & Rahman, R. (2015, July). Electrical and computer engineering laboratory education for female undergraduate students: Challenges and solutions from an urban perspective of Bangladesh. In 2015 10th International Conference on Computer Science & Education (ICCSE) (pp. 389–394). IEEE.
