Hon Chairperson, the first woman to make a substantial contribution to the development of mathematics was an African. Around 400 AD Hypatia of Alexandria, Egypt, taught mathematics, philosophy and the movements of the planets. It is believed that she co-developed the plane astrolabe, the graduated brass hydrometer and the hydroscope, the forerunners of many scientific instruments that facilitated astronomy, celestial navigation and much scientific endeavour.
By all accounts, she was a feisty and assertive woman who would not be bound by the conventions of her day. She drove her own chariot and exerted considerable political influence in her home city.
But this stretching of boundaries to seek verifiable truths was seen by a group of religious fanatics as a threat. So, in the year 415 AD they killed her. She was stripped naked, her flesh was ripped from her bones, her body parts were scattered through the streets, and some were burned in the local library.
Interestingly, these zealots didn't murder her father who was also a mathematician, philosopher and teacher, neither did they murder the many male scientists with whom she collaborated. It was just Hypatia who was singled out as a threat.
Luckily, women scientists are not treated so harshly today. They are accepted by most of their male peers as equally contributing colleagues. Many have made exceptional strides in all fields and in wining top accolades, such as Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology and medicine.
There are many government and private-sector sponsored awards worldwide that single out women achievers in these fields. These are essential in creating role models for young women whose ideas of future careers are formed during childhood.
Our Department of Science and Technology plays a positive role by giving a number of awards to women scientists who are active in both academe and industry. This public acknowledgement seeks to help redress deep-seated prejudices about women's ability to do maths, physics, science and engineering. Research by the American Association of University Women found that social and environmental factors, not the intelligence and reasoning capabilities, contribute to the underrepresentation of women in science and engineering. They don't lack ability, but they are often starved of opportunity, resources and support.
What does hamper women scientists is biology. Research published last year by the National Academy of Sciences of the United States said that underrepresentation of women in science is due primarily to issues of family formation and child rearing, lifestyle choices and career preferences, many of them made before young women leave school.
Women's current underrepresentation in maths-intensive fields is often attributed to gender discrimination by grant agencies, journal reviewers and research committees. However, this research shows that women fare as well as men in securing jobs, funding and publishing their research in scientific journals, as long as they have comparable resources.
Given the same research resources as their male counterparts, women scientists are as innovative and as productive, but most of them work in underresourced teaching posts. While this gives them the flexibility of working hours to raise their families, it allows little time for original science. Choosing to raise a family usually clashes with that stage of their careers when academe expects them to make their greatest intellectual contributions. This is not a career-limiting milestone for most men. To liberate women scientists to fully exploit the opportunities their ingenuity and education afford, our research institutions, universities and commercial enterprises must, as an economic strategic imperative for our nation, devise nonlinear career paths for our scientists.
We must bring innovation to the way the scientific workplace operates to ensure that our women scientists can unleash their full potential. I look forward to the day when we no longer need to use gender to draw attention to the exceptional contributions women make to the world of science, technology and engineering. [Applause.]