Doing It All

Trailblazing is hard work. And it can be achieved in various ways as evident in the first-ever Forbes India W-Power Trailblazers list

- Abhilasha Khaitan

On a recent Sunday evening, I took my 15-year-old niece to see Hidden Figures. She wasn’t convinced it was a smart choice for her weekend entertainment, but I promised her she wouldn’t regret it. Two hours later, she turned to me and said, “I owe you one.”

Hidden Figures tells the inspiring story of three brilliant female African American mathematicians who worked for NASA, but whose stellar contributions to its space missions went unrecognised. In the racially conflicted United States of the early ’60s, ridden with ‘Colored Bathroom’ signs and gender stereotypes, their job was to remain in the shadowy world of back-office computers. It is is only now, after this movie (based on a book of the same name), that these women—Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan— have got credit for their iconic roles in NASA’s history. I could see that their remarkable story had struck a chord in my niece’s teenage heart.

This is 2017, and the idea of a woman breaking through a male-dominated world still resonates. Still excites.

The reason for this is that female achievement continues to be novel. Not for want of skill, obviously, but for a complex range of social and cultural factors.