Date: 27 Oct 2021 (Wed)

Time: 12:30 – 14:15

Venue: Online via Zoom

Speaker: Prof. Anju Mary Paul, Associate Professor, Sociology and Public Policy, Yale-NUS College

Moderator: Prof. Susanne Yuk-ping Choi, Professor, Department of Sociology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Abstract:

This talk draws on in-depth interviews with 40 Asian women scientists to examine the relative impact of their gender on their scientific training and careers in Asia and the West. The original concept of “gender shock” is used to describe the negative or positive experience of these women when they enter a social space or milieu that has a set of gender norms and values different from the one that they came from and are familiar with. I highlight how Asian women scientists are more likely to experience gender shocks at particular inflection points in their intersecting career and life courses, and how they react to negative gender shocks and ongoing gendered social pressures by making “gender compromises” in one or more domains of their lives. These corrective actions often (but not always) damaged or dampened their career trajectories, or took their life course in an unexpected direction.

Speaker’s Biography:

Anju Mary Paul is an international migration scholar with a research focus on emergent migrations to, from, and within Asia. Her award-winning first book – Multinational Maids: Stepwise Migration in a Global Labor Market (Cambridge University Press 2017) – explored the stepwise international labour migrations of Filipino and Indonesian domestic workers. Her forthcoming book, Asian Scientists on the Move: Changing Science in a Changing Asia (Cambridge University Press 2021) explores the increasing return migrations of Western-trained Asian scientists, the factors behind these returns, and how they are shifting the topography of the global scientific field.

Language: English

Registration: https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13640064
（Zoom link will be provided to registered participants）