When women reach for the sky



SHE stands out, right in the middle of the photographs of the crew of the ill-fated space shuttle Columbia. You get even more intrigued when you find out her name is Kalpana Chawla.

An article in Monday's New York Times, by Amy Waldman, gives a fascinating account on Chawla, who was the first Indian astronaut to go into space.

Chawla's life, even if it ended so tragically, reminds us of how people, women especially, can overcome the most difficult odds, not just to equal but to race ahead of the more powerful.

Chawla's parents were originally from Pakistan but migrated to Punjab, India, in 1947, when the subcontinent was subdivided into two countries. (Many Hindu families chose to leave the new nation of Pakistan, which was predominantly Muslim.)

The New York Times story said Chawla's parents arrived in India with almost nothing, but her father was an innovator and became a prosperous rubber industrialist. No doubt, this wealth helped Chawla to achieve what she aspired for, but there also had to be much more than just an economic edge.

Chawla grew up in Haryana, which is one of the more conservative states in India when it comes to the treatment of women. An indicator is the high rates of abortions of female fetuses in the state. Here, prospective parents use ultrasound to determine the sex of the fetus and choose to abort if they find out it is female. The female fetal abortion rates are so high that among children under the age of six, the sex ratio in Haryana is now 820 girls for every 1,000 boys. (In a more "natural" situation, the ratio is usually one where there are actually slightly more females than males.)

Adversity probably strengthens the resolve of people trapped in such circumstances. I have been in India and Bangladesh and have always been amazed at how visible, and assertive, women are. In fact, the countries on the subcontinent -- India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka-have all had women prime ministers.

Again, no doubt class and family background were important in catapulting women to positions of leadership. Like our own Cory Aquino and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the subcontinent's prime ministers have all been widows or daughters of male politicians.

Yet, we know only too well that there are many women from the upper classes, in India or the Philippines, who would like to see women more restrained, kept at home in traditional roles. Some of these women may even have doctorates so there's certainly more to women's advancement than class and educational attainment.

In Chawla's case, we learn from the New York Times article that her father was very conservative but Chawla was lucky because she had a strong mother, and inspiring women teachers.

Reading about Chawla's situation while she was growing up in India made me think about our situation in the Philippines, where women have relatively more opportunities for social mobility, in terms of legislation and public policies, compared with her sisters in south Asia. Yet, I often suspect our families are the ones who block females from moving forward, with mothers themselves chiding a daughter who dares to dream: "Babae ka lang (You're only a girl)."

Chawla was apparently encouraged by women in her family and school to defy tradition. She chose to take aeronautical engineering, the only woman to do so at her college. Despite her father's disapproval, she went on to do a master's and a doctorate in the United States, and married an American, again a courageous act because the marriage wasn't arranged and her husband was not Indian.

Eventually Chawla became an American citizen and joined Nasa, the US space program. The Columbia mission was actually her second trip on a space shuttle, quite an achievement considering that there's only a handful of women astronauts in Nasa.

Chawla was 41 when she died, but clearly led a life as full as it could possibly be. Images of the Columbia crew, with Chawla in the middle, can be powerful, telling us of a woman who didn't just reach for, but soared high into, the skies. It should not be surprising if we hear more girls, American, Indian, and, I would hope, Filipino, proclaiming, with confidence, "I want to be an astronaut."

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