Female face of technology and entrepreneurship

“No country can ever truly flourish if it stifles the potential of its women and deprives itself of the contributions of half of its citizens.”- Michelle Obama. Women face immense difficulties in the pursuit of their careers especially in the field of science and technology and these hardships become even more brooder within Indian contexts. The upbringing and socio-cultural conditioning and norms prevalent in the society are still significant factors that control the path of women's career. In Spite of Global connectivity and technological advancements, women are still underrepresented and the IT sector continues to be largely dominated by men. Over the period of time many studies and researches have proven female capabilities of time management and strong multitasking. Yet women end up in situations like wage gaps, stagnant posts and biased intellectual break. Shirley Chisholm rightly said "Tremendous amounts of talent are being lost to our society just because that talent wears a skirt." However, overcoming the hurdles we do have great examples of strong resilient women who have set solid benchmarks and embedded their footprints in the field of science, technology and entrepreneurship. Marie Curie, a physicist and chemist was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize for her research on Radioactive Decay. Rajeshwari Chatterjee was the first Indian Women Scientist to pioneer the field of Microwave and Antenna Engineering in India. Sudha Murthy, despite coming from a typical Indian middle class family, with her father's support was the first female student to have completed her BTech from an all boys college who later became the first female engineer hired at TELCO. The increasing presence of women as entrepreneurs has led to the change in the demographic characteristics of business and economic growth of the country. Women-owned businesses enterprises are playing a prominent role in society inspiring others and generating more employment opportunities in the country. Vandana Luthra, founder of VLCC and Kiran Mazumdar Shaw is India's wealthiest self-made women and founder of Biocon Limited. Indra Nooyi, former CEO of PepsiCo who has joined Amazon’s board of directors in 2017, has held the title world’s 11th powerful woman as per Forbes. After working 20 years as an investment banker with Kotak Mahindra, Falguni Nayar left the job at the age of 49 to pursue her own dream. In 2012, she started Nykaa, which sells online cosmetic and wellness products. In 2020, Falguni Nayar became the first female entrepreneur to take an Indian unicorn public. Endeavors of many such women in proving themselves efficient and breaking the stereotypes in male dominated realm has attracted a lot of support in these domains and otherwise. Despite women’s contribution to society, they faced a lot of bias and unfair treatment in the field of technology and business until recent times. However, this phenomenon is seen changing. efforts are being made and support is being extended to encourage more and more women to explore technology and entrepreneurship and enhance it with their creativity because at the end a progressing community can only be built by uniform efforts by both men and women.