Mayuri Pawar * and Deepa Chari **
Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR, Mumbai, India*
mayurip@hbcse.tifr.res.in* and deepa@hbcse.tifr.res.in**
Science popularization aims at connecting to a generic and diverse audience with the intention of growing scientific knowledge in the reached communities. In science popularization, resources persons play a key role in maintaining good standards of science and technology dissemination. Careers in science popularization can satisfy many enthusiastic science graduates’ career-interests as well as their urge to contribute to science advancement. In spite of this, women representation in science popularization careers is low. The study captures experiences of women working in the science popularization field. A narrative inquiry methodology was applied to collect contributing authors’ first-hand experiences. In addition, interviews were conducted with 5 more participants, and the participants’ narratives were developed. The authors collectively analyze these narratives to understand how participants identified the possible benefits of working in this area. Further, they emphasize some of the challenges described by the participants in their career trajectory and how they dealt with it. Some challenges involved poor infrastructure at the camp sites or travel facilities, and negative attitudes of colleagues about women leadership, etc. A few experiences depicted how women themselves had to opt-out from opportunities in science popularization due to some of the above-mentioned conditions.