Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Sanya Mathu­ra was lead­ing a lu­bri­ca­tion train­ing out in St Maarten when a man put his hand up and asked about her back­ground and com­pe­ten­cy to train him. “My back­ground is what­ev­er is be­hind me,” she joked, but Mathu­ra knew where he was go­ing with this. She re­told the sto­ry to the Sun­day Guardian’s WE Mag­a­zine, “He said, “No. I need to know if you are tech­ni­cal­ly com­pe­tent to speak to me on this sub­ject.’”

For some­one with a BSc in Elec­tri­cal & Com­put­er En­gi­neer­ing and an MSc in En­gi­neer­ing As­set Man­age­ment, it was an easy ques­tion for Mathu­ra to an­swer. She at­tained her Ma­chin­ery Lu­bri­ca­tion En­gi­neer (MLE) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from the In­ter­na­tion­al Coun­cil of Ma­chin­ery Lu­bri­ca­tion (ICML) and was the first in this coun­try to se­cure this cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and the first fe­male at that.

Yet, such a sce­nario of men ques­tion­ing the com­pe­ten­cy of women in STEM (Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, En­gi­neer­ing and Math­e­mat­ics) is com­mon. It is so com­mon, that Mathu­ra has spent the last sev­en years em­pow­er­ing women in such fields. So much so, that she pub­lished a book in De­cem­ber 2022 ti­tled “Em­pow­er­ing Women in STEM”. It is one of six books she has writ­ten and two of those sur­round women in STEM.

“It’s a very male-pop­u­lat­ed in­dus­try–when I say dom­i­nat­ed peo­ple get up­set, so it’s a very male-pop­u­lat­ed in­dus­try. That is one of the things that I am try­ing to change with every­thing I am do­ing. I be­lieve women can think about things very dif­fer­ent­ly in so many ways,” Mathu­ra said.

Ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics from the En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T in 2022, the down­stream con­trac­tor labour force was pre­dom­i­nant­ly male, with just 12 per cent of the labour force be­ing fe­male in 2021. Over the pan­dem­ic pe­ri­od, the num­ber of fe­males in the con­trac­tor labour force fell even more sharply than the num­ber of males. Dur­ing 2019, the last full pre-pan­dem­ic year, the per cent of fe­male work­ers was 14 per cent or over 2,000 fe­male work­ers. This fell by al­most 50 per cent by 2021, when there were just over 1,000 fe­male work­ers in the con­trac­tor labour force, com­pared to a drop of 38 per cent for the male labour force in the same pe­ri­od.

Such num­bers star­tle Mathu­ra, and that is why she has moved to ad­dress the de­cline. How­ev­er, she said her work aims to em­pow­er both women and men.

“When I wrote the books, I said there was not go­ing to be any bash­ing of men in this. Even though we talk about em­pow­er­ing women in STEM, it is about the guys as well be­cause we can’t get here with­out the guys, and we can’t stay here with­out the guys,” she ex­plained.

Mathu­ra in­sists one can­not ex­ist with­out the oth­er in in­dus­try life, and both can sure­ly co­ex­ist in “male-pop­u­lat­ed in­dus­tries.”

She said, “When you’re out on a plant, for ex­am­ple, you want to know that the peo­ple that are out there with you have your back, cause should some­thing go wrong–and things go wrong–you want to be able to re­ly on them. You don’t want to be in an en­vi­ron­ment where you feel so un­safe that you don’t trust any­body else out­side of oth­er ran­dom fe­male col­leagues that you have. That’s why every time I’m pro­mot­ing women in STEM, we’re al­so pro­mot­ing the guys, we’re al­so pro­mot­ing the al­lies be­cause we can’t do it with­out them.”

Yet, de­spite some strong al­lies in men, Mathu­ra has seen many women strug­gle in STEM in­dus­tries across the world. She said that af­ter five years in the work­place for women en­gi­neers, they usu­al­ly leave for an­oth­er field. This is main­ly dri­ven by what she said was dis­crim­i­na­tion and wit­ti­cism that is aimed at the weak­ness­es of women. For ex­am­ple, their phys­i­cal strength in the work­place.

As Mathu­ra found out, whether she is work­ing in the in­dus­try or run­ning a busi­ness, she will face sim­i­lar chal­lenges in dif­fer­ent ways.

Hav­ing start­ed the com­pa­ny Strate­gic Re­li­a­bil­i­ty So­lu­tions Ltd, one day she in­tro­duced the busi­ness to a “pres­ti­gious or­gan­i­sa­tion” in T&T and was asked, “‘Who is the guy who came up with the idea for this com­pa­ny?’” She sighed.

In her writ­ings and prac­tice, Mathu­ra has aimed to show the strength of women in STEM and what they bring to the ta­ble. She told us, “Women are im­por­tant be­cause we think dif­fer­ent­ly. We analyse sit­u­a­tions dif­fer­ent­ly. It goes back to a na­ture and nur­ture thing. When you do the analy­sis, and you think about all the re­search, men analyse things in a very prac­ti­cal way. Women do that too, but some­times when women analyse things, they go to a cre­ative route, and that’s the best way to do some things. Prac­ti­cal is good, but there are al­so times when we need to think out­side the box.”

As an ad­vo­cate for women in STEM, she has al­so been try­ing to change the nar­ra­tive sur­round­ing women and fam­i­ly life. Mathu­ra said when women have to go through dif­fer­ent changes in their lives, from get­ting mar­ried to get­ting preg­nant to start­ing a fam­i­ly and in­clud­ing their men­stru­al cy­cle, their boss­es are con­stant­ly strate­giz­ing how to cope with their ab­sence. “That should not be a de­ter­rent,” she said. In­stead, Mathu­ra is adamant that women should not have to choose be­tween their fam­i­ly and ca­reer.

Grow­ing up, she al­ways knew she want­ed to be an en­gi­neer, but she didn’t have any fe­male en­gi­neers to look up to. This is where she seeks to in­spire those who now hold the same dream she once had.

She fur­ther ex­plained, “One of the main things I al­ways try to do is be the change that I want­ed to see. Be the role mod­el for the oth­er peo­ple who would not have had that op­por­tu­ni­ty, so you see a brown girl from the Caribbean on a stage in the Unit­ed States talk­ing about lu­bri­ca­tion, and you’re like, I can do that too. If you want to be able to do these things, you have to be able to see peo­ple do­ing these things.”

De­spite all the chal­lenges women face in STEM, Mathu­ra said she was see­ing steady progress. “We are get­ting there. It’s a slow pro­gres­sion, but we are get­ting there. We have a lot of women start­ing to get to these high­er po­si­tions.”

Mathu­ra is on­ly in her mid-30s and has been work­ing tire­less­ly to re­shape how women are viewed with­in STEM in­dus­tries. It comes af­ter she en­dured set­backs as a young en­gi­neer.

Her last­ing words for women with­in the en­er­gy in­dus­try and STEM were, “Just be your­self. Don’t let the in­dus­try change you. Don’t let them put the bar­ri­ers on you. Don’t let them say you can­not wear pink or do your nails. When they tell you that, tell them to get a pair of gloves for you.”

With in­clu­siv­i­ty be­ing at the cen­tre of glob­al con­ver­sa­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to women in STEM and the en­er­gy sec­tor, Mathu­ra is adamant she doesn’t want to re­move men from the ta­ble, but in­stead add more seats where women can be part of the dis­cus­sion, have their voic­es heard, and con­tribute in a gen­uine way to bet­ter in­dus­try stan­dards.

Hav­ing felt the sting of in­equity in her in­dus­try, Sanya Mathu­ra will not cease in her de­ter­mi­na­tion to stamp it out un­til the last woman stops en­dur­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion.