For A Lalitha, the responsibility of raising her four-month-old daughter was heavy. Married at the age of 15, Lalitha gave birth to a healthy, beautiful baby in the September of 1937 when she was 18. Just four months later, the teenage-mother lost her husband.
Baby Syamala was now the responsibility of a single mother.
Heads shaved, a strictly restricted life and banishment from society, the life of a widow was a prolonged trauma that they had no choice but to endure. Although the practice of Sati was less prevalent in Madras (now Chennai) where Lalitha had lived, societal standards still prescribed an austere life of isolation and perpetual sorrow to the young widow.
Instead, the forward-thinking and courageous Lalitha decided to overthrow all existing, outdated norms and pursue engineering. A male-dominated field then, Lalitha had made a decision that would make her India’s first female engineer!
Lalitha, fifth in the line of seven siblings was born on 27th August 1919. Her family was a typical middle-class Telugu family where the brothers had gone ahead to become engineers and the sisters were restricted to basic education. As was prevalent in those times, Lalitha was married off at the age of 15. Her father, however, insisted that a marital life should not interfere with her education and ensured that his daughter studied till class 10.
A mother’s instincts that made history:
Lalitha’s story is just half a narrative if we don’t follow the journey of her daughter, Syamala Chenulu. Now settled in the USA, Syamala has fond memories of how her mother, an icon in the field of engineering, faced her challenges while raising her. Speaking to The Better India (TBI), Syamala says, “When my father passed away, mom had to suffer more than she should have. Her mother-in-law had lost her 16th child and took out that frustration on the young widow. It was a coping mechanism and today, I understand what she was going through. However, my mother decided not to succumb to societal pressures. She would educate herself and earn a respectable job.”
Medicine was quite a popular field for women in those times. However, medicine requires the professionals to be available round the clock and Lalitha did not want to fall into a profession that would require her to leave her baby in the middle of the night. She needed a typical 9 to 5 job that allowed the young mother to spend time with her beloved daughter.
Like her father, Pappu Subba Rao and her brothers, Lalitha chose to become an engineer.
Rao, a professor of Electrical Engineering at the College of Engineering, Guindy (CEG), University of Madras, spoke to KC Chacko, the Principal of the college and to the Director of Public Instruction, RM Statham. Both the officials were supportive of admitting a woman—a first in CEG’s history.
“Contrary to what people might think, the students at amma’s college were extremely supportive. She was the only girl in a college with hundreds of boys but no one ever made her feel uncomfortable and we need to give credit to this. The authorities arranged for a separate hostel for her too. I used to live with my uncle while amma was completing college and she would visit me every weekend,” Syamala tells us.
A few months after Lalitha started her studies in 1940, she conveyed that though she was fine in the college, she was lonely in the hostel. Rao believed this was an opportunity to invite more women to follow his daughter’s path and advertised open admissions in CEG for women. Leelamma George and PK Thresia soon joined albeit for the civil engineering course.
“Both of them were juniors to my mother by a year. However, all three of them graduated together because the second world war was at its peak in 1944 and the university decided to cut down the engineering course by a few months,” Syamala explains.
A trailblazing engineer:
For a brief period after graduating from CEG, Lalitha worked with the Central Standard Organisation in Shimla as well as with her father in Chennai.
Fun fact: CEG had to remove the word ‘He’ from their printed certificates and replace it with ‘She’ for Lalitha, Thresia and Leelamma when they graduated.
Rao invented Jelectromonium (an electrical musical instrument) as well as an electric flame producer and smokeless ovens. Lalitha had assisted him in these innovations. But within nine months of joining her father’s workshop, Lalitha started looking for other avenues and settled for a job in the Associated Electrical Industries in Kolkata.
Syamala explains, “My aunt lived in Kolkata and had a son about my age. We were very close and so, amma used to go to work leaving me with my cousin and aunt. That’s how I grew up. Although, today, I can understand how important my mother is in the history of women’s education in India as well as in the history of engineering, back then, all I knew was that my mom is an engineer—just another engineer.”
In the years to come, Lalitha’s achievements were to be recognised at international platforms too. In 1964, for instance, she was invited to the first International Conference of Women Engineers and Scientists (ICWES) in New York. It was during this conference that her mother’s importance as a professional really dawned upon Syamala.
“But what I take from her life is her extreme patience towards people and the quality of doing instead of just talking. She never remarried and never made me feel the absence of a father in my life. She believed that people come into your life for a reason and leave when the purpose is over. I never asked her why she never got married again. But when my husband asked her, she had replied, “To take care of an old man again? No, thank you!”
Throughout her career as an engineer, Lalitha had made sure of two important things—that her daughter is raised by loving people and that her being a woman in a male-dominated world would never be an obstacle. While attending the New York conference, she had very famously said, “150 years ago, I would have been burned at the funeral pyre with my husband’s body.”
Fortunately for women in India, she went on to become a trailblazing electrical engineer, lighting up the way for others to follow.
Lalitha passed away at a young age of 60 years due to a brain aneurysm but the legacy she has left behind is a gift for generations to come.
NV: Growing up, what were the expectations regarding your education – from family and friends? What drew you to the study of engineering? Did you have any mentors at school or college who helped you on this path?
SM: My father, who was a doctor, was also a brilliant scholar. He was admitted to medical and engineering colleges, but ended up choosing medicine, since he had to take care of his widowed mother, and engineering would have required him to stay in the hostel at that time. I heard him say hat he missed studying engineering because of this, and that made me want to study engineering to compensate for him not being able to do so. Also, I had always been curious about how things worked, and had an abiding interest in handling repairs and fixing things. There were no expectations in my family. My three sisters and I excelled academically, and we were encouraged to study whatever we wanted in college. My older sister chose to be a doctor, and I decided to be an engineer. I really had no one to guide me except for my own interest.
NV: In your workplace, were experiences of female engineers different from male engineers? How did you overcome this?
SM: I never really gave my gender any thought when I was working. I just wanted to do my best in the field I had chosen. I never really questioned whether I should be doing what I was doing. It felt quite natural to me. It is only when I reached a leadership role that I looked around and found that I was the only woman at the table, but even that didn’t faze me. In my job at Consilium, (now part of Applied Materials) as engineering lead, I travelled all over the USA, and to countries such as Germany, France, Japan, Singapore, Scotland, and Taiwan, visiting semiconductor wafer fabs and talking to the customers directly about their problems and needs. One visit to Oki Semiconductor in Japan is memorable for a meeting I had in its smoke-filled conference room with an all-male group, except for just one other woman there who served tea, an experience which I remember even today. Each of us is a unique individual, and I am sure that my experience was probably different from what other women experienced.
NV: There is so much talk in the present day about the gap seen in male versus female tech employment. What are your views on this topic?
SM: Women are roughly half of the total population, and this ratio is true in America too. The 2018 US statistics seem to show that women in the workforce is proportional to their ratio in the overall population. However, when it comes to the American tech workforce, according to https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/state-of-women-in-tech/ , only a quarter of all computing jobs are held by women, and even this seems to be on a downward trajectory. It also appears that women leave tech jobs at more than twice the rate as men (yes, men leave tech jobs too!).
I recently conducted an informal survey (not a scientific sample however because the survey population size was small). The reasons cited for the gap between men and women were: not enough flexibility to help women balance work and family commitments, long hours expected at work that women with family commitments could not afford to spend, and not much opportunity for advancement.
Today, technology is advancing at a rapid pace. If an employee stops or takes a break from working for any reason – marriage and relocation, parenting, or elder-care – it is very hard to get back into a rapidly changing tech scene. Many women opt to get out of tech jobs to follow other career paths. There are some initiatives in the industry to help women (or men) re-skill. For example, IBM has a re-entry program https://www-03.ibm.com/employment/inclusion/techreentry.html that is aimed at helping those who took a break to restart their careers. Such programs are available around the world, not only in the tech sector, according to https://www.irelaunch.com/paidcorporateprograms.
NV: Is there anything else regarding this book that you would like to share with our readers?
SM: Several women from the book have made America their home. One of them, Sarada Parthasarathy, just turned 90, and lives near San Francisco. Prabavathi Kawai had a very brief career as an engineer, and she now lives in Michigan. Nalini Uhrig, who had a long and illustrious career at AT&T’s Bell Laboratories, Columbus, Ohio, and later in Lucent Technologies is now retired and lives in Florida. One of the most successful women in the book, Radha Basu, a serial entrepreneur, and the CEO of iMerit Technologies, a global , social, enterprise, also makes the SF Bay area her home. And of course, I live here in the Bay area as well.
This book is written in simple prose so that even girls who receive a vernacular education in India can read and relate to the stories here. They can learn about life as an engineer, and have high aspirations for their educational and professional goals.
100% of the royalties from this book go towards supporting girls’ education through the Rotary Club Madras East, Chennai, India.
Cover Picture credit: Siva Shankaran Vasanth
Nirupama Vaidhyanathan is the Managing Editor of India Currents magazine.
News Today: 225-year celebration at College of Engineering Guindy, Chennai, May 2019.
The photo exhibition on the occasion of the 225-year celebration at College of Engineering Guindy, Anna University, Chennai. Excited to see the pictures I contributed on the 29 women in Roots and Wings being displayed.
I was sad to hear about Mr. Muthiah’s death. I had known him through email correspondence when I started writing the stories that are part of Roots and Wings. In particular, I reached out to him about his article in The Hindu about May George, the 4th woman in the book. He not only took the time to talk to me, but also wrote an article in The Hindu, asking his readers to help me. Chennai has lost one of it’s jems.
“When Dr Shantha Mohan, who is writing a book on the women graduates of the College of Engineering, Guindy (CEG), contacted me recently, seeking more information on May George (Miscellany, February 3, 2014 ), I got more information from her than I could give. I’d always thought that the College had admitted only two women students, its first, in 1940, but I learnt from her that three had been admitted. They were PK Thresia, Leelamma George and A Lalitha, all receiving their degrees in 1943 with the certificate having ‘He’ struck out and replaced with a handwritten ‘She’.”
As the Integrated Innovation Institute celebrates its fifth anniversary, faculty share what’s next in their field of expertise. Dr. Shantha Mohan, a senior software engineering leader and entrepreneur, mentors students as Executive In Residence at the Integrated Innovation Institute. In 2018, Mohan released her book “Roots and Wings: Inspiring Stories of Indian Engineering Women,” sharing the experiences of alumnae from India’s oldest engineering college.
Q: Why did you decide to write “Roots and Wings?” A: At the end of 2016, I retired from Retail Solutions, the company I co-founded in the Silicon Valley, and decided to spend my time mentoring, and giving back to the educational institutions which made my career possible. While doing my undergraduate in engineering at College of Engineering, Guindy (CEG), Chennai, the oldest engineering college in India, I was focused solely on my studies, and was oblivious to the rich history of my alma mater, and the special place the very few women in college held among the thousands of male engineering students. Now, with a high awareness of the importance of encouraging women to participate in the technology fields, I wanted to put female role models in front of girls and women to promote STEM education, and decided a good way to do that was to write about the CEG alumnae who started it all in India. I wrote this book for girls back in India. There are some girls who know what they want from a very early age and there are some who aren’t so decided. They may have no idea what it means to be an engineer. I thought about girls who don’t grow up with any professionals as role models.
Q: How did you collect stories for the book? A: The book took more than a year to write, and covers the stories of twenty-nine women who graduated from 1943 to 1971. I started by reaching out to my alumni connections and getting a list of female alumni by year of graduation. Once I had the names, I reached out to other alumni via Facebook pages, and LinkedIn connections to find out more. I also used extensive internet searches. I must say that I am pretty good at it, and I am persistent. Once I had a contact for an alumna, I contacted them or their families through different means – emails, phone calls, Facebook messaging, LinkedIn messaging – to collect information. This was quite challenging, since the time difference made it very difficult to have a phone conversation. I posted each story on my website, after getting the buy-in from the families of deceased alumnae, and the living alumnae. The book is a collection of these stories.
Q: You feature alumnae who graduated decades before you. What did you learn from women of different generations? How were their experiences different or similar? A: Many of the very early Indian women engineers pursued engineering because their fathers or families wanted them to do so. As we approach the recent decades, that had changed. Many women took up engineering in spite of opposition from their families. For early women alumnae, just the effort to get to the college was huge. They were disadvantaged because the men had dorms, but there was no place for women on the campus. So they had to stay off-campus and commute. This continued even to my days where we had to stay in a women’s hostel outside the campus.
The one outstanding quality of women in the book is that they were all high achievers, and simply ignored any put-downs and went about reaching their goals, irrespective of the generation. And another important characteristic of the women is their resiliency in the face of adversity, irrespective of the generation they were part of. I advise my mentees to be resilient by following what they’ve set out to do! That can be hard, so you have to find a support system, a fellow traveler, and get the strength to keep moving.
What also struck me as I was writing was that life is not all about what you decide when you’re sixteen or seventeen. Sometimes, you come across opportunities that look like something you may be interested in, so you have to try it out. I wanted to tell young girls that flexibility is probably the most important characteristic that you can have. Be flexible, be resilient, and things will work out.
Q: What advice do you have for women navigating careers in male-dominated fields? I believe it is a wonderful time to be entering the workforce. The corporate environment has become more aware of the importance of cultivating women leaders. Corporate cultures are becoming more inclusive, more diverse. Today’s women have grown up in a world that values gender equality much more than in the past, and are much more confident, independent, knowledgeable, and driven to succeed. There are amenities available to working women today – someone to do your shopping, services to deliver food etc. that make it possible for women to spend more time on their careers, if they choose to. There is also more support for women, from women, with the understanding that together, we go far.
When it comes to your career, ignore gender. Be focused. Have great aspirations, and work towards them. Put excellence and quality into everything you do. Stay current on technical advances. Build yourself a strong support network – starting with your spouse, if you have one. Find a mentor, a sponsor, who can help you grow. Let your work speak for itself, but make sure you are visible in the organization, and your chosen industry. Don’t be afraid to beat your drum.
My mentoring style is all about listening and figuring out what my mentees want to get from our mentoring relationship. It’s important to develop both immediate picture and long-term goals. I’ve learned that, if you don’t have a few small wins in the short term, you can be get discouraged or lose sight of long-term goals.
Q: Who were some of the people or mentors who influenced you in your career? A. When I was growing up, my father was my hero. He used to tell a story that he had always wanted to be an engineer, but couldn’t. He had a widowed mother to take care of. When he applied to colleges he had the option between engineering and medicine, but to study engineering, he would have to move and live on campus. So, he decided to stay home and study medicine. That story always stuck with me and, coupled with my interest in how things worked, I always knew I would be an engineer.
I also had a fantastic advisor for my PhD, Gerald Thompson. He helped me understand the process, what it means to be a risk-taker, and how to write.
At my first job in the USA, I had a wonderful boss who saw what I could do and was supportive of promoting me to a project lead, then, a manager. The CEO of the company noticed my capabilities and mentored me in my career progression to become head of software development. Later he asked me to join him in co-founding a company, and that’s when I became an entrepreneur.
I’ve also learned a lot by being a mentor. I’ve always had this engineering mind that tries to solve every problem. When I hear someone say, “I have a problem with this, I’m not sure how to address it,” my reaction is to say, “You can do x, y, or z.” Over time, I’ve learned to ask more, to listen more to what people are thinking.
When A Whole Tribe Of Women Engineers Inspire Generations Of Girls In STEM
Shruti Parija March 7, 2019
Shantha Mohan’s book Roots And Wings assembles a ready reckoner of 35 women Engineers graduating from the same institute between 1943 and 1971, a veritable treasury for inspiration in STEM careers.
“There are only two lasting bequests which we can hope to give our children – roots and wings” ~ Hodding Carter
Published in 1953, this quote has left a timeless impression on many, including me, and continues to ring true in today’s evolving societal and feminist contexts. As women today are grappling with the ever increasing demands of their personal and professional lives, it is important to talk about the real stories of women who have made a mark in their professional lives, while continuing to fulfil their familial roles.
Cut to a domain which is male dominated, and traditionally, has had biases against the very inclusion and participation of women as professionals, and we are faced with a whole new level of complexities.
Statistics have shown that women are less likely to pursue a career in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) as compared to men, according to the recent Revisiting Women in STEM survey by Mastercard and research house, Incite.
One can only imagine the situation two generations earlier, when misogyny and gender asymmetry was at a comparative peak.
35 trailblazers
In this context, it is refreshing to read through the lives of 35 exceptionally brilliant and perseverant women in the world of STEM, whose journeys Shantha Mohan has captured so beautifully in her book Roots and Wings – Inspiring Stories of Indian Women in Engineering. The book takes you through the lives of 35 women who graduated between 1943 and 1971, from the College of Engineering, Guindy(CEG), the oldest engineering college in India, and one of the oldest in the world.
A few of these women have gone on to become trailblazers in their domains, both nationally and internationally.
Let’s look at the life of Lalitha Mohan, who was the first Indian woman engineer.
She started her work life at the Central Standards Organization of India, and went on to be a part of significant historic projects at the Associated Electrical Industries(AEI) such as the project on electrical generators for the Bhakra Nangal dam, the largest in India at the time.
In an illustrious career spanning over 30 years, what really stayed with me about her life was the fact that she managed to do so while being a child bride and later, a widow with a young child.
Imagine the amount of commitment required to balance life as a single mother and widow, and to do equal justice to a gruelling professional role, where you are the only woman across all rungs of the enterprise.
Similarly, one is consumed by the awe inspiring achievements of the prolific K.S. Babai, and her commitment to excellence in engineering education.
Babai joined the Dharambal Women’s Polytechnic(DWP) as an assistant lecturer in 1966, and went on to become its Principal. She secured an autonomous status for the institution, and started professional chapters in continuing education, jewellery technology, a women empowerment cell, and quality circles in education and environment.
Babai was a member of several prestigious engineering bodies nationally and internationally, and established path breaking convergences with the Canadian International Development Authority during her tenure. It is at this juncture, that one must sit back and appreciate the unwavering efforts of a woman to continue to make a dent in the world of engineering education for women, a world which remains severely afflicted by misogynistic perceptions.
The implications of starting a family on the brink of a career
As a woman who entered her 30s recently, I have been toying with the idea of starting a family sometime soon. With conversations around the biological clock ticking, and the continuing innuendos by family and friends alike to get started on this journey, I cannot help but think about the implications and pressures of becoming a mom, on my career, which is at an extremely exciting and interesting stage, and promises to get even more demanding over the next year or so.
I am absolutely in agreement with Shantha Mohan that several critical events such as marriage or motherhood can interrupt a woman’s work life, and it takes a lot of rewiring to start afresh or pick up from where one left. This requires not only grit and gumption on behalf of the women undertaking these journeys, but also support and an enabling environment from the personal and professional ecosystems surrounding a woman. The women listed in the book have navigated through unchartered waters in their careers and personal lives, and I am extremely inspired to see the various ways in which it can be done, albeit with the tacit recognition that certain compromises will be a part of it.
An enriching book
Whether it is Shantha Mohan’s life herself as a leader and established entrepreneur in the field of software engineering, or that of the multiculturalist Kawai, this book is sure to inspire many young women wanting to take up careers or make a mark in the field of STEM. It works very well as a handbook to keep going back to, especially when certain life situations get the better of you, and one needs advice and guidance, if not inspiration and motivation itself to get back on track.
It is often said that a man is known by the company he keeps. I believe a woman benefits tremendously from having her own tribe of women – a tribe made up of mentors, catalysts, friends and coaches sharing and mirroring life stories and lessons with each other through the way, an intimate coterie to inspire, motivate and love you.
Shantha Mohan’s tribe of women do exactly that, and I salute their out of the ordinary achievements, courage, and determination to lead absolutely prolific lives. Most of all, I salute Shantha Mohan for lucidly covering the narratives of their lives, and for writing a book that will remain relevant many centuries from now.
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Shantha Mohan’s Book ‘Roots and Wings’ a Collection of Inspiring Stories of Indian Women in Engineering
India-West Staff Reporter Jan 9, 2019
If you are looking for stories of courageous women or just some inspiration, then look no further than Indian American engineer and author Shantha Mohan’s book, “Roots and Wings: Inspiring Stories of Indian Women in Engineering.”
This book chronicles the lives and careers of 29 women who graduated from the oldest engineering college in India, College of Engineering, Guindy, in Chennai, sometime between 1943 and 1971.
This was a difficult time for these pioneering women to pursue their chosen path, yet they all went on to make their mark in their unique ways in various fields of work in India as well as in the U.S., says Mohan in the author’s note, adding that overcoming several obstacles in their careers, these women managed to find a good balance between family and work.
A few were, and are, also great community leaders, she writes, highlighting that their lives are models of courage, initiative, perseverance, innovation, entrepreneurship, resilience and flexibility.
Mohan explains that if anyone wonders whether a woman can pursue a successful career in technical fields while enjoying a satisfying family life and still find a way to make meaningful social contributions, then this book, which chronicles the lives and careers of women who managed to do just that, is the one to read.
Mohan, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, is herself a role model. She graduated from CEG with a bachelor’s degree in electronics and communication engineering in 1971. After working for few years at Electronics Corporation of India-Hyderabad, she got married, had a child, and moved to the U.S. She went on to receive her doctorate in operations management from Carnegie Mellon University.
Since then, she told The Hindu, she has worked in the field of software product development and engineering, and co-founded a retail analytics company. In 2017, she started mentoring at the Silicon Valley campus of Carnegie Mellon University.
Mohan told the publication that it was while teaching young women that she realized they didn’t have exposure to female role models in technical fields. “Around the same time, the scarcity of female presence in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, was becoming a hot topic in the U.S,” she was quoted as saying. “Attending CEG as one of eight girls in my batch of hundreds sparked the idea of writing the stories of the women who came before me, hoping to inspire girls to take up STEM education, and succeed in engineering careers.”
One of the stories in the book is about R. Sulochana. Her father pushed aside opposition from the extended family and insisted that Sulochana get a professional education. Her ambition was to become an engineer, following in the footsteps of her brother who was four years older than her. She had a very successful career in civil engineering in the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board, becoming their first woman chief engineer in civil designs, retiring in 1999 after 37 years of service.
100 percent of the proceeds from the sale of these books will go toward supporting girl education in India through Rotary Club Madras East.
There certainly exists a vast gender gap in the field of engineering, not just in India but across the globe.
It is not that women are not interested in the field. In fact, I’ve personally met several who were quite passionate about becoming engineers and went on to become successful ones too.
But not every girl in this country receives the motivation and opportunities that my friends did. Often, discouragement and the fear of society leads to dreams being nipped in the bud, which, sadly, explains the skewed gender ratio in technical fields.
Now, think of a time in India when the concept of a working woman in any field, let alone in the engineering sector, was inconceivable.
However, history is a witness to the fact that there have always been women who refused to be slowed down and soared free to chase their dreams.
Interestingly, all of them had graduated from the College of Engineering, Guindy (CEG) in Chennai, between 1943 and 1971. For the uninitiated, CEG is the oldest engineering college in India.
From A Lalitha, who is celebrated as the first Indian woman engineer, to Mallika Chellappa who worked as a researcher for the prestigious defence development labs of the Indian government, the book offers its readers a glimpse into the lives and careers of these women as they pursued their chosen path.
Dr Mohan is a renowned name in the field of software engineering and operations management expertise, and this is her first literary work.
“Overcoming several obstacles to their careers, these women managed to find a good balance between family and work. A few were, and are, also great community leaders. Their lives are models of courage, initiative, perseverance, innovation, entrepreneurship, resilience and flexibility,” shares the author to The Better India.
Making an excellent read for those interested in the history of pioneering Indian women, Roots and Wings isn’t a book that you just recommend to just women or girls.
If you want to do anything new—break new ground, fight the odds or persevere to reach your goals—regardless of your gender, these are stories you must read for the requisite dose of inspiration.
What is more, all royalties from the sales of the book will be routed to Rotary Club Madras East (RCME) to support girls’ education in India.
Tracing roots of 29 women graduates from College of Engineering, Guindy
Published: Dec 15,201807:15 AM by Merin James
Shantha Mohan’s book Roots and Wings chronicles the lives and careers of women who managed to do just that — these 29 women graduated from the oldest engineering college in India sometime between 1943 and 1971.
At the end of 2016, Shantha Mohan retired from the company she co-founded in the Silicon Valley and decided to spend her time mentoring, and giving back to the educational institutions that gave her the strong foundation for her career. “I started to become very active on the professional social networks as well as my alumni network. While doing my undergraduate, I was oblivious to the rich history of my alma mater, and the special place the very few women in college held among the thousands of male engineering students. While reading about alumni of my undergraduate Alma Mater College of Engineering (CEG), I came across an article about the first Indian woman electrical engineer, A. Lalitha in an article in Swarajya. The debate about women and STEM education was gaining momentum around this time. I wanted to put female role models in front of girls and women to promote STEM education, especially engineering and decided a good way to do that was to write about the CEG alumnae who started it all,” says Shantha.
Though she graduated from CEG with a bachelor’s degree in electronics and communication engineering in 1971, Shantha managed to collect the information of 29 women mentioned in the book. “The vast alumni network of CEG was extremely helpful in collecting the information. I got in touch with some of my former batch mates and seniors and started to build a list of women who graduated from CEG. I decided to publish each story, as I was completing them, in a blog, as well as on LinkedIn. After seeing my blog, family members of some of the women reached out to tell me about their mothers and aunts. Once I had the names, I spent countless hours researching on the internet, following threads that sometimes were dead-ends, but other times lead me to a family member who was willing to talk to me,” says the engineer.
Women make up half of the entire world population. Yet, you don’t find many women in engineering. “While the enrollment in engineering colleges has changed from a handful to almost equal representation of women in some geographies, it doesn’t translate to equal participation in the workforce. Critical events in women’s lives — such as marriage, babies and elder care — all interrupt women’s work life. Coming back to work from that interruption in these fast-changing days is hard. I wanted to change that by showcasing the lives of women who not only graduated with an engineering degree but went on to have fulfilling lives, balancing family and career,” explains the author.
The 29 women mentioned in the book can be divided into three categories — those who were no longer living, those who are old and retired, and those who are still active in their careers. “The hardest ones to write about were the ones who are no longer alive. I was quite methodical about keeping a list of the current and copious notes on my research in order to write about them. Writing about A. Lalitha, the first woman electrical engineer, was probably easier in some sense. Her daughter Syamala handed over to me numerous clippings from the press and was willing to talk about her mother.”
The engineer-author says that each of the stories touched her heart in different ways. “Some of the women had to overcome the conventions of the time to forge a path for themselves; some of the women embody the epitome of resilience by overcoming severe family and personal tragedies to become successful in their careers; some of the women showed incredible flexibility in how they navigated their careers. They are all very dear to me,” she sums up.
The red brick façade of the College of Engineering has been framed by the Guindy forest for nearly a century now. But, its roots go back to 1794 when it was first founded as the School of Survey, making it India’s oldest technical institution and the oldest outside Europe. In its long march of 224 years, CEG has gone from detailing the geography of the subcontinent to exposing its graduates to every conceivable branch of engineering.
For nearly 150 years, it was the men who held fort; in 1943, the first group of three women — A Lalitha, PK Thressia and Leelamma George — graduated. By 1971, 35 of them had made their mark as pioneers in telecommunications, civil, technical education and research, and went on to head several Government agencies.
It is some of these women that Shantha Mohan, herself a CEG graduate, throws the spotlight on in her book Roots And Wings . The book that took a year to write is significant for the fact that it celebrates women who held jobs in rare fields at a time when they were hardly part of the structured workforce.
Shantha graduated from CEG in 1971 with a degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering. “I spent a few years at Electronics Corporation of India (ECIL) Hyderabad, married, had a child, and moved to the US,” she says via email. She received her doctorate in Operations Management from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. “Since then I have worked in the field of software product development and engineering, and co-founded a retail analytics company. In 2017, I started mentoring at the Silicon Valley campus of CMU.”
Shantha says it was while teaching young women that she realised they didn’t have exposure to female role models in technical fields. “Around the same time, the scarcity of female presence in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), was becoming a hot topic in the US. Attending CEG as one of eight girls in my batch of hundreds sparked the idea of writing the stories of the women who came before me, hoping to inspire girls to take up STEM education, and succeed in engineering careers.”
Researching for a book based in India was not easy. “There was a brief article in Swarajya about A Lalitha, India’s first woman engineer. There were a few Malayala Manorama articles on PK Thressia, the first woman Chief Engineer in India. There was a news article about May George in The Hindu, written by historian S Muthiah. But, for the most part, nothing is known in the public about the women in the book. My batchmates helped me put together a list. I was able to connect with some of these women. For others, I reached out to their relatives. I emailed editors of newspapers. On LinkedIn and Facebook, I reached out to complete strangers who, I thought, could be relatives of the women. I also was able to talk to their former colleagues to piece together their career highlights.”
The book follows a linear narrative, briefly describing who the women are, their experiences in college and at work, and their family backgrounds. But it is some of the photographs that capture your attention — the class photo with a single woman in pigtails surrounded by a sea of men in ties, a sari-clad Kalpathy Sarada perched on a ladder, setting up an instrument at the National Physical Laboratory, visiting avionics labs and setting the stage at AIR, family photographs of stern fathers and laughing children — portraits from lives crowded with achievement.
Shantha, who divides her time reading, teaching and being a grandmother, says, “I didn’t realise what many women go through to balance their careers and families. It takes a supportive family structure to do it well. And, it can be done. I hope this book helps girls see that they can have a successful career in the technical field, while nurturing families.”
Royalties from the Roots And Wings sale will fund girls’ education through the Rotary Club Madras East. Available online for ₹350.
A fascinating read of the stories of the first few women engineers in India. The author, Dr. Shantha Mohan, has done an incredible job of painstakingly researching the lives of each one of them (around 30) and giving us a coverage of their lives from childhood through college, professional and family life to post-retirement. Each of these stories can be read independently and you can read as many as you want to, but the author ties them all together nicely into the common themes of – these women following their passion unmindful of the stereotype of the day and succeeding at it through determination and discipline.
The other commonality among the 30 engineers featured in the book is that they all graduated from the College of Engineering, Guindy, Chennai (See photo above in this review). Chennai is thought to be more conservative than other metropolitan areas, but the earliest women engineers in India have been from this institution. We have all seen the pictures of the women engineers in Sarees working in ISRO celebrating the successful Mars mission. This book is the story of how it all started.The stories of these engineers is relevant not just for those interested in entering Engineering. If you want to do anything new – breaking new ground, fighting the odds and persevering to your goals – regardless of the gender, these are the stories to get inspired from. The author deserves kudos for bring us these.
Roots and Wings” by Shanta Mohan makes for delightful reading.
The book details Indian Women’s journey into Technology from the beginning i.e. 75 years ago.
These women pioneers’ lives sure has motivated several.
This book would now help motivate so many others, not just in India but also in Several conservative societies in the world, especially so in all developing and underdeveloped economies
Ms. Shanta Mohan needs to be thanked and complimented for this publication.
G Narayan Rao
So absorbing. It is always a reader’s delight when the contents of a book is well structured, well researched, and well-written. Good bowling/pitching, good batting, good fielding, and a knowledgeable commentator makes an enjoyable ballgame.
As an alumnus of CEG, I always wondered how these women pioneers felt in the then male-dominated institution. It is so gratifying to read they each had an illustrious engineering career. When I visited the CEG campus in 2016, it seemed so co-educational. One more proud feather in the cap of our visionary poet Bharathi who was w.a.a.a.y ahead of his time in every one of his passionate predictions.
This book is a must read – the author has painstakingly put together the stories of the women engineers who were trailblazers. I liked the pictures that were part of the stories as they provided additional perspective. These engineers inspired multiple generations and they did it with no fanfare – just doing their job and giving back. A valuable addition to a bookshelf.
This comprehensive review of the 29 women who succeeded in engineering from 1943 to 1971 should inspire any girl in any country to keep trying to meet her dreams even in “male” pursuits. These are lives of inspiration, courage, flexibility and initiative in a culture that certainly didn’t encourage women. I wish it had existed to give to my sister-in-law who was the first woman engineer in a small college in Texas in the early 60’s….
This book records Indian women in engineering , their achievements and life story. Reading about the struggles they went through to become an engineer in a then male dominated field is extremely inspiring. Kudos to the author for documented this for future generations to understand the struggles and accomplishments. It is a must read for all aspiring engineers and those who have crossed that path.
This book is a wonderful read of stories of the first few women engineers (about 29) from 1943 through 1971 who graduated from College of Engineering, Guindy, Chennai known as CEG. The author has done a great job of researching the lives of each one of them and giving us a coverage of their lives from early childhood through college, their professional accomplishments and family life to retirement. It is well structured (almost Wikipedia style), well written and each of these stories can be read independently or as many as you wish. I liked the pictures provided as part of the stories.
As an alumna of CEG, I often wondered how the women ahead of me fared in their professional and personal lives. Further, it was nostalgic to read about the stories of my immediate seniors and hostel mates, Nalini Uhrig, Shantha Mohan, Radha Murthy and Rajeswari Mariappan.
Kudos to the author for documenting these stories for future generation to emulate. The stories of these extraordinary women is relevant to not just for those interested in entering Engineering or for just for women, but for anyone keen on making/breaking new ground, to reach one’s goals against all odds regardless of gender if one shows courage, determination, discipline and resilience just as these women did. This book should be a recommended book for school and community libraries.
This book, Roots and Wings : Inspiring Stories of Indian Women in Engineering – is a great compilation of inspiring stories of women Engineers who graduated from College of Engineering, Guindy, Chennai. The best part is that each story is narrated so well, making the book engaging like a novel. There are many interesting facts and personal stories. Young people who are curious to learn about how it was to become an Engineer in those days, particularly women – must read this interesting book. Well researched and the author, Dr Shantha Mohan, who is also an alumnae of College of Engineering, Guindy, has taken pains to contact so many of them and elicited interesting anecdotes about these women’s journey. This book is a record of history which has to be present in all the libraries so that the future generations would learn about the ladies who took the less travelled path, early on and contributed significantly to the society.
As a woman STEM professional whose mind has turned towards the history of feminism in India, I approached this book from a slightly different perspective. The exhaustive research done by Ms. Mohan does more than tell inspiring stories of individual women. Taken together, the stories shed light on an important time in Indian women’s history.
During the years just prior to Independence and soon after, India went through a renaissance. It was about questioning conservative ideas and discarding the ones that were seen as damaging. Some of the women profiled in this book came from families where fathers, and often also mothers and grandmothers (most of them illiterate), supported the education of their daughters. Usually, they did this despite the opposition of relatives, neighbors, and other community members. There was a great deal of risk and sacrifice, but the education of women was seen by these pioneers (families as well as individual women) as an unadulterated good — for the individuals, their families, their communities, and the nation.
The women students knew that a lot was riding on their shoulders and they made it their mission to make the most of the opportunities available to them, and to make the same available to the women who came after.
In hindsight, success seems inevitable. But, when in the trenches, it is not so. The profiles in this book bring out the truth of this observation. So, hats off to these foremothers of today’s Indian women engineers.
One final note – the feminism a reader will encounter in this book is of a different nature than its better known Western counterpart. It is like Indian culture and worked well in Indian culture — adaptive, determined, and less confrontational.
Anyone who has an interest in how social change started and how it succeeded in India will enjoy reading this book.
