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Who Gets to Wear the Lab Coat? Rethinking Inclusion in Science

Despite South Asians being the largest population in the world, their visibility in neuroscience, particularly as women, remains strikingly limited. From global celebrations of culture to leadership in technology and industry, South Asian presence feels increasingly visible, yet in scientific spaces, that familiarity often disappears. Peehu reflects on what it means to search for belonging in neuroscience as a South Asian woman, why representation matters beyond symbolism, and how visibility, mentorship, and institutional change shape not only who becomes a scientist, but whose science is recognised.


As a member of the diaspora, I have seen an increasing representation of South-Asians. After all, we do make up the largest population in the world. I see it in the inclusion of South Asian festivals, such as Diwali, being celebrated around the world. I see it in how people embrace my cultural foods (such as samosas!). I see it in how people cry, laugh, and dance with Bollywood. I see it in most technocrats being of South-Asian descent. Yet, somehow, I have never seen female South Asians in neuroscience. 


I have wrestled with these questions a lot in the past months; have I not explored enough to find a neuroscientist who looks like me, understands my perspective, or was it institutional? Are there no female South Asian Neuroscientists? That couldn't possibly be true. When I joined WiNUK, I met neuroscientists who looked like me. It's because WiNUK values diversity and champions it that I was able to change my beliefs. So, yes, I am sure they do exist but there is a need for them to be brought to the forefront. We need more organisations to spotlight their diversity. 


This raises the question: why is there a need for a neuroscientist who looks like me in the first place? When I was in school, I couldn’t imagine what I would look like if I became a scientist. I would just imagine an empty white coat in response to, “Who do you want to become when you grow up?”. Well, there is a need for a role model who looks like each of us so that when a child decides what they want to pursue, they can visualise themselves in their shoes. Having a role model who looks like you in science is permission to imagine yourself belonging there.

For many South Asian women in science, belonging has always felt conditional. We enter spaces where excellence is expected, but representation is rare. We learn to speak the language of science fluently, yet still feel like translators of our own identities. Our experiences as women of colour in neuroscience reveal how sex and gender alone cannot explain inequity. 



Who participates in science also determines whose realities get studied. 


Culture, race, and history intertwine, shaping not just who becomes a scientist, but whose science gets seen. Studies by Girod et al (2016), and Valantine (2016) suggest a double discrimination for women scientists of colour; Asian and African-American women scientists were found to be less likely to receive funding support. Vilanilam et al., (2016) showed large gender discrepancies in authorship between women from developing countries and their male counterparts in high impact factor neuroscience and neurology journals. 


Likewise, adopting an intersectional perspective is essential for uncovering health disparities, as we are not just the product of our biological factors but also of our culture, social environment, and personal experiences. This is exemplified in projects conducted by the Einstein Lab where studies found an urgent need for culturally sensitive healthcare practices, which include the unique perspectives related to gender and immigration when researching pain management in elderly South Asian women. Thus, there is also a need to include specific demographics and make research samples more inclusive to reflect the diversity of the world. 



Making the data human


Behind statistics and policies are lived experiences of belonging, alienation, mentorship, and quiet resistance. I spoke to South Asian women in neuroscience across the diaspora and they describe parallel struggles:


“As a South-Asian woman in neuroscience, I have often found it hard to navigate scientific spaces without having many role models within STEM who look like me to show me that we too can achieve similar things as our caucasian counterparts. In addition to this, being part of a culture who historically has not encouraged females to pursue ‘male dominated fields’ like STEM, it has been extremely difficult to navigate but, with the help of networking and mentorship opportunities with other South-Asian females and being able to learn how they have dealt with such struggles has been really insightful. And so, having experienced this, I believe it is important for me to showcase the highlights and challenges that we, as South-Asian women, deal with throughout our careers to enable other South-Asian females to feel both seen and heard.”


-Riya Verma, BSc in Neuroscience


“I moved countries many times growing up, and it often felt like I never truly belonged. When I was 8, I moved from the UK to India. Even though I looked like everyone else, I didn’t understand the language or culture, and I knew deep down that I didn’t fit in. Later, attending an international school in the Netherlands, I met people from all walks of life across the globe, which broadened my perspective and gave me a sense of connection I hadn’t felt before. Moving to sixth form in the UK, I then found myself the only person of colour in my class, which made me acutely aware of my identity and the ways I had to navigate spaces where I didn’t fully belong. At Keele University, everything changed. The diversity of the lab I worked in, and the support from peers and mentors, made me believe in myself as a scientist. Whether we were celebrating wins or working through setbacks together, there was always a sense of shared purpose and community. For me, that is what science should be: uplifting one another, learning together, and creating space where everyone can belong.”


-Ishika Joshi, MRes Translational Neuroscience UCL, Graphics Executive WiNUK


“Being a woman of colour, shaped by two distinct cultures, gender and different upbringings, has its own set of challenges, but it has also given me a unique perspective and a rich set of experiences. As someone from a South-Asian background, I have often heard that we are ‘overrepresented’, yet I rarely encounter people who look like me in my profession. There is also the subtle challenge of stereotypes, where being perceived as too docile can be seen as a stereotypical threat. Once, after setting professional boundaries, to my surprise, it seemed colleagues were talking about it among themselves. Making you question whether the same reaction would occur if a white man set identical boundaries. Another challenge lies in the realm of diversity initiatives. Imposter syndrome can creep in, making you wonder whether your inclusion in a programme is due to merit or simply your ethnicity, and whether others perceive it the same way. Despite these obstacles, what has truly supported me on my academic journey are the incredible women mentors I have been fortunate to have. Their encouragement, guidance, and example have been invaluable, helping me navigate challenges and find confidence in my own abilities.


-Neuroscience PhD student Cambridge University (edited for readability)


Their stories only differ in geography and experience, yet they echo a shared truth, that belonging in science is not only about opportunity, but about visibility, validation, and voice.



True inclusion requires institutional redesign


A study on the proportion of female neurosurgeons in the field found that the factors that contributed to gender differences were most frequently mentorship, lifestyle, the glass ceiling, and discrimination. So, I met with Dr Shubha Tole, a prominent Indian Neuroscientist, to discuss what she thought real support for women in science should look like today. 


Dr Shubha Tole runs her own lab - the Stole Lab at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai - where she investigates neurodevelopment. I first met Dr Shubha Tole at The BNA2025 Festival of Neuroscience and I was in awe to meet a female South-Asian neuroscientist, especially in an academic leadership position. Immediately after meeting her, I googled her and came across her thoughtful and meticulously written blogs. They mentioned things I had personally experienced as a South-Asian. When I first read her essays, I felt seen in a way I hadn’t before. I hadn’t realised how rare it was to encounter an Indian woman neuroscientist in the first place, moreover speaking so candidly about the realities of science.


Dr. Tole tells me her first glass ceiling was shattered at home when her mother translated and narrated pujas (Hindu ritual) herself in Marathi, rather than following the tradition of a male priest who would conduct it in Sanskrit which no one would understand. Moreover, the puja is supposed to be performed by the male head of the household. When her father grew tired of it, the duty would have fallen to her brother. Instead, her mother created two identical puja setups, allowing Dr. Shubha and her brother to perform the ceremony. She noted that she might have been “the only girl in all of India who has performed the pujas as a matter of natural course.” 


During our conversation, she also redirected me to her poignant talks ‘The freedoms we give up’ and ‘When does a young girl learn she must compromise her dreams’ that detail the social programming that teaches young girls to compromise their aspirations and potential very early in life; their achievements can never come at the cost of making a family. Unlike boys, girls are taught to imbue their dreams with constraints from the very beginning, often resulting in the creation of the absence of a dream so that she can fit into whatever dream she is given or allowed to have. This means that women become very skilled at self-rejection before they even aspire to something. Giving up personal freedoms without realising the limitations of it. 


Even if they aspire to something, her professional life is always impinged upon with their decisions regarding marriage and children. In her experience, completing her graduate studies in California, a cultural melting pot, Dr. Tole noted that the field of developmental neuroscience had a good gender balance. It was only upon returning to India that she noticed the particular challenges of being a woman scientist. She and her husband both secured jobs at the prestigious TIFR, but she observed that family and friends routinely assumed that her job was a special add-on, rather than acknowledging that both of them secured their jobs equally.


In her 2009 essay ‘Scientist and Mommy’ and 2011 essay ‘One possible plug for the leaky pipeline’, she argues that having a child is not an exceptional situation, or a ‘speed-bump’, for a post-doc to deal with alone. Rather, it is a natural and normal phase of life that the institute or Principal Investigator (PI) in-charge should provide support. For her, the golden recipe was hiring a technician to support any lab member who is expecting a child, serving as an extra pair of hands, granting flexibility and industrious productivity for the new parent post-doc and lab. What struck me the most from our conversation was how she framed this as a foundational, institutional infrastructure and not a band-aid solution or temporary inconvenience.


Dr. Shubha Tole is also the President-elect of IBRO (International Brain Research Organization) and she notes that her election signifies a significant breaking of barriers. A barrier was first broken in 2019 when Tracy Bale became the first woman president of IBRO. The second barrier was broken when Dr. Tole was elected, who is also the first person from the global south to hold that position, serving as a testament to how truly global IBRO has become paving the way for more organisations to spotlight their diversity. 



Where there’s a will, there’s a way


Our conversation highlighted the ways bigger barriers could be broken by policies, but also through lab culture, mentorship, and community to make it more inclusive and equitable. Ultimately though, Dr Tole asserted that one strong individual factor that definitely affects a person's success is the will and determination of the person. While, the role of the system should simply be to figure out what support is needed for that individual and to provide it. 



So, who gets to wear the lab coat?


Upon reflection, perhaps the real goal isn’t to add adjectives like woman, South Asian, or diverse before the word scientist, but to make the word itself expansive enough to contain all of us. When the word scientist was first coined to describe Mary Somerville’s interdisciplinary work, it signified inclusion; an attempt to make space for a woman whose intellect couldn’t be denied. The world had to invent a new word to acknowledge her interdisciplinary brilliance. Two centuries later, we’re still reinventing the meaning of that word, ensuring it finally belongs to everyone; where anyone can imagine themselves as a scientist and they don’t just have to think of an empty white coat. To change our schema of what a scientist looks like we need to ensure visibility on all levels: institutional, community, and individual. 


References


This article was written by Peehu Jain and edited by Rebecca Pope, with graphics produced by Lilly Green. If you enjoyed this article, be the first to be notified about new posts by signing up to become a WiNUK member (top right of this page)! Interested in writing for WiNUK yourself? Contact us through the blog page and the editors will be in touch.

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