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Lina Nilsson, the innovation director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies at the Universityof California, Berkeley, says female engineers are attracted to programs and research that focusses on achieving societal needs and goals, humanitarian projects, and meeting the special needs of developing economies. Better engineering that helps people improve lives attracts the involvement of women. She cites enrollment at the Blum Center for Developing Economies programs, PhD. minors in development engineering at UC Berkeley, undergraduate international minors at University of Michigan, the D-Lab at M.I.T., humanitarian engineering programs at Arizona State University, University of Minnesota, Penn State, Santa Clara University, Princeton's Engineers Without Borders chapters and clubs, where women's enrollment exceeds that of men. She contrasts this with the low numbers of women engineers in general- less than 20% of tech engineers at Google and Apple, and less than 14% in the U.S. workforce. Her advice- make work meaningful to society and women will enroll in large numbers, not just in computer engineering, also in mechanical and chemical engineering....

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Trupti Shete of Aurangabad is one of 21 women pilots of 91 who will operate the new Metro 2A and 7 in Mumbai inaugurated by prime minister Modi. She did her bachelors in electrical engineering. For 3 years she struggled to get a job. Building much needed infrastructure means new opportunities for young people in India.

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Three women who ranked in the top three of the IAS exams in India. The IAS provides the people who run the Civil Service in India and fill most senior government positions throughout India. Shruti Sharma, 26 years, is from Delhi, and studied History at St Stephens College and JNU. Her family is from Bijnore, Uttar Pradesh. Ankita Agrawal, 25 years, is from a business family in Kolkata. She has a Bachelors in Economics from St Stephens, and studied political science, international relations. Gamini Singla, 23 years, is from Punjab's Sangrur, and has AB Tech from Punjab Engineering College in Chandigarh. She chose Sociology as optional subject. 

All three want to contribute to education, women's empowerment and to society. All three did not pass on the first attempt. They did mostly self-study and used newspapers to follow current affairs. 

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M Vanitha is the Project Director and Ritu Karidhal is the Mission Director for India's Moon Mission, Chandrayan 2. The two women aerospace scientists were in charge of the mission's details. India's moon space program may be the only space program in the world where the mission directors are women aerospace scientists. The Head of ISRO the organization running the space program, Mr. Sivan, is a aerospace scientist with 36 years experience in all types of rocket design and technology, who headed the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center and the Liquid Propulsion Systems Center. Mr. Sivan took over in 2018 and directed the program to the launch in July in the face of delays and technical problems with the Vikram Lander. He comes from Tamilnadu from a rural region near Kanya Kumari who graduated from IIT Madras with a Masters degree in Aerospace Engineering. 

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Nineteen year old Belgian Zara Rutherford becomes the youngest woman to fly solo roundtrip around the world. Her parents are avid pilots and she learned to fly at the age of 14. She took off in a microlight plane Shark Aero on Aug 18 and landed after 52,000 kilometres of flying in Flanders on Jan. 20. She went through UK, Greenland, Americas, Siberia, Southeast Asia, India, Saudi Arabia and Europe. In that journey she went through freezing temperatures over Siberia, smog in India and wildfires over the US northwest.

She plans to study electrical engineering and would like to see more girls taking interest in science and engineering, and in flying planes.

Her approach was bold and straightforward. It was a trip that she thought was- impossible, expensive, complicated, dangerous, a logistical nightmare, so she never thought about it twice. 

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Only 12% of England's professional engineers and technicians are women. There is demand for 124,000 engineers annually and 79,000 technicians, according to EngineeringUK A shortfall of 59,000 engineers means many positions are unfilled partly because women are not taking up these roles even now.

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WSJ's Monica Langley provides an exceptional report with a close look at the first woman CEO at a large corporation in the cusp of great change. IBM CEO Ginni Rometty is remaking IBM by moving out of existing businesses and shifting to new growth areas such as analytics, cloud computing, new R&D advances. She sees her job as building the IBM of the future, and this includes divestments and phasing out of some businesses, acquisitions, and building some businesses such as the Watson Heath Care business from scratch. In some fast growing areas such as cloud computing this means competing with other established competitors, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Rometty's job is tough because of the size of IBM with 380,000 people in 170 countries, a culture that lacks the agilityof younger companies, and the older businesses which continue to slow IBM's progress, and where divestments reduce revenues. IBM sales are down for 12 consecutive quarters from the year earlier quarter. IBM's share price is down about 10% since Rometty became CEO in Jan. 2012, resulting in investor dissatisfaction with results. Rometty's goal is for 40% of IBM's revenues to come from corporate markets in analytics, cloud computing, cybersecurity, social networking, and mobile technologies, increasing it from 27% of about $93 billion in sales in 2014, and 15% of $105 billion in sales in 2013. Sold off and divested are low end servers, IBM's chip maker, and other hardware businesses. It is so extensive that whats left of the mainframe business is focussed on new technologies for mobile. Rometty setup a partnership with Apple for the corporate mobile market, and started Watson Health as a new venture in analytics for healthcare using its Watson Computer technology. Rometty grew up in Chicago, one of 3 daughters raised by a single mom, who says she was taught to be "fearless" by her mother. She graduated from Northwestern University with majors in electrical engineering and computer science, joining IBM as a systems engineer in 1981. She carries a backpack, school size notebooks, on her frequent trips to see customers in person and is constantly prodding employees at IBM to go faster. Rometty has a passion for scuba diving in her spare time and always carries the gear with her. Christine Lagarde at the IMF is one of the few women heading large organizations that have the same level of energy. Lagarde's passion is swimming having competed in sychronized swimming, and both Rometty and Lagarde describe the loss of a parent in different ways as a significant impact in their life. ...

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The U.S. Department of Labor says it has evidence of "systemic compensation disparities" against women at Google in violation of federal employment laws. A regional solicitor for the Department of Labor says the government analysis shows this "discrimination against women at Google is quite extreme, even in this industry." Google's own diversity statistics show 31% of employees were women in 2014, with whites making up 59% and Asians 32%.

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Cyrus Mistry, who is 43 years old, head of the Shapoorji Pallonji Group, a construction company, will be the new CEO of Tata Sons. He was a board director of Tata Sons for several years. His father is the largest shareholder in Tata Sons with an 18% stake in the company. Mistry, who comes from the same Mumbai based Parsi families as the founder and previous heads of Tata Sons, studied civil engineering at the Imperial College in London and management at the London Business School. He is an Irish national because of his father's marraige to an Irish woman. The previous chairman of Tata Sons before Ratan Tata, J.R.D. Tata, who ran the company for most of the postwar period, also had a similiar background, as J.R.D.'s father married a French woman. By virtue of its acquisition of the steel company Corus Group, and the acquisition of Jaguar-Land Rover, Tata Sons is now the largest manufacturing company in the U.K., in addition to being one of the largest and most well known companies in India. About 58% of sales now come from overseas. Companies in the Tata Group include Tata Consultancy (IT), Tata Motors (autos), Tata Steel (steel), and a range of other businesses in India. Ratan Tata will remain chairman till Dec. 2012, to give time for Cyrus Mistry to assume his new role....

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David Brooks of the NYT is critical of the way Google CEO Sundar Pichai handled the Damore email affair. Pichai cut the discussion short and fired a 28 year old engineer who wrote a controversial memo about women and working in the software industry. Brooks says the memo actually makes things harder for women in a male dominated tech world.  Not mentioned here or in the coverage in the media is that Google could have used this as an opportunity to refocus the discussion on how to correct the exaggerated tilt in favor of men in the male dominated tech world- about 80% male. Even with the differences between men and women is such a huge tilt a good idea? How could it be handled by giving women better opportunities and changing the culture itself to ways that can make it good for both sexes. An extremely competitive environment with its corresponding behaviours is not the best environment for all. Most of the male dominated tech world does not walk the talk by actually helping women in tech in multiple ways, including changing their own culture- this itself could have become the focus of the discussion. Google could turn its gaze inward and say this is happening because it was too late or not doing enough, and use this as a wake up call- letting people be heard, yet quietly redoubling its efforts as some contrary voices explain how the current situation happened, is another way to respond effectively that eluded Google.  ...

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Anna Fifield of the Washington Post provides this exceptional piece on Yuka Ogata, a 42 year old municipal assembly member of the Kumamoto Municipal Assembly. Yuka sat in the assembly seat with her 7 month baby in the front row to the men looking on in amazement. Ogata has a Masters degree in conflict resolution from George Mason University. Ogata was earlier reported to have created a stir by sitting while pregnant while asking questions.  Yuka Ogata says she wants to draw attention to the struggles of women as they seek to work so that they can raise a child and work happily. Japan's government has announced the key goal of "womenomics" to increase participation of women in the economy as a way to increase growth. Earlier Yuka had asked the Assembly authorites to open a day care center or let mothers bring their children to work. Both requests were denied and Ogata's child was removed from the Municipal Assembly. Here Anna Fifield gives other examples. Larissa Waters who according to new rules nursed her baby in the Australian parliament. Licia Ronzulli, an Italian member of the European parliament takes her daughter to the chamber in Strasbourg sine 2010. Yuka Ogata says it helps to know what other countries are doing as she makes her own efforts to get the same opportunities in Japan. ...

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A number of issues came up at the Women20 Summit in Berlin. Annette Niederfranke, Director of the International Labor Organization, brought up the issue of family reconciliation as "one of the toughest challenges for working women worldwide," that in order to meet obligations women tended to work in "non standard forms of employment and in part time work linked to lower wages, lower social security, lower benefits, and fewer training possibilities." Childcare was also an issue that was prominent considering the lack of adequate childcare in many countries including in the European Union. With responsibilities for the elderly, babies, and small children women tend to be in the workforce for shorter periods leading to men taking up many of the higher positions. Angela Merkel pointed out that Gemany tended to take a narrow view of professions available to girls, saying- "So it is very very important that we take a broader view of things while girls are still at school." Merkel also supports a Africa compact that would help women set up small and middle size businesses in poor countries. The "Digital" aspects of this and other efforts for women were a major topic being discussed. One idea that came up was that more cooperation from men was needed to make things happen. This is the third Women20 Summit after ones in Turkey and China, and a sense of momentum was felt by women. ...

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Members of the U.S. Congress lead a lousy life with life split between the capital and their home state location, most are weekend dads or moms. This makes them less likely to grasp the issues of work-life balance and the issues of parenting faced by average working families or couples with both parents working, says this essay in Politico magazine. This is true also of understanding issues facing women and mothers. Hard to believe but this report points out that Congress in the U.S. does not have a family friendly leave policy and no restroom for women till 2011 on the floor of the House. Similar issues face women in Japan and other countries for women in parliament. Former Speaker Ryan says he is tired of being a "weekend Dad." Senator Biden, former vice president says of his commute from Delaware to Washington D.C., he realized that "a child has a thought he wants to share and 12-18 hours later its gone, gone, gone." ...

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Claire Cain Miller points to the high cost of child care in the U.S. and the benefits to society from providing affordable child care. It has a high impact on women's employment and incomes, and ability to pursue opportunities in education and career. The effect on children especially for low income families is enormous. Average cost for child care in the U.S. is by one estimate $16,514. The higher the quality of care in early years the better the outcomes are for children in education, careers, income, and later in life.

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Interview with Gerard Kleisterlee, retiring CEO of Philips Electronics. Kleisterlee led the effort to focus on emerging markets where sales of health care, lighting and consumer products are accelerating. Second quarter sales in emerging markets went up 29% for 2010 over the prior year, and now are 34% of total Philips sales. As part of this strategy Philips is increasing its staff and research divisions in China, to capture part of the $125 billion that China plans to spend on healthcare in the next 3 years. Kleisterlee talks about local competitors in emerging markets who are trying to get a regional or global presence. How Philips is increasing local responsibility, and how it is designing, engineering and manufacturing products specifically aimed at local markets in emerging market countries- as away to compete effectively in these markets. He also points out that it is no longer sufficient to be in the major cities, Philips has to move into smaller cities and into the rural areas to increase sales. He sees consolidation opportunities in Asia where the lighting manufacturing is still fragmented. Responding to a question about Philips still being too old, too male, and too Dutch, Kleisterlee agrees that it is too male and too Dutch for his comfort. Women are a bigger part of his health-care team, but not that much progress in other areas of the company. And he would like to see more local leaders in emerging markets. He sees consumer behaviour changing in one respect- there is an increasing consciousness among buyers for value, and not just for low price points, but at all price points....

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A dispute in Brazil between the government committing part of the oil royalties from new oil discoveries in coastal oil producing states such as Rio de Janeiro to improving education in Brazil. Coastal producing states fear the loss of an estimated 3 billion dollars under this plan. Some of the money goes to states in the interior of Brazil such a Goias lacking educational facilities and funding for teachers.

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Miyuki Hatoyama describes the problems Japanese women face working in government and business with a lack of adequate child care, and the attitudes in Japanese society limiting the role women can play outside of the home. This makes it harder for women to contribute to society with their own creativity, talent and efforts, and pursue careers. Her husband was elected DPJ party's head and prime minister of Japan in 2009. The couple have a very natural way of meeting people and blending together with other people, bringing new ways in a traditional culture.

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The BBC's Soutik Biswas takes a look at prime minister Modi as he seeks a second term in India's general election in May 2019.  Modi's first term is marked by exceptional development schemes, efforts to provide health insurance to 500 million people who cannot afford health insurance, bringing cooking gas cylinders to hundreds of millions of Indian women especially in rural areas, efforts to jumpstart building of infrastructure projects such as airports and metro subways. A new law for GST brings together the country with one tax instead of a hodge podge of state taxes for interstate commerce, something India needed for a long time but different governments failed to implement. A failed effort to fight corruption by removing from circulation large denomination currency notes reduced economic growth briefly during the first term, though it may have accelerated the shift to formal economy needed in the long run to improve tax revenues for development needs. One of the problems for the Modi government is how do you put a value on something like Swach Bharat Mission, the achievement of the goal of defecation free India in 2019 by 100% on the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, getting rural toilets up from 38% to 100%. Development had to start from the bottom up. Similarly in a country where middle men took up a lot of the transfer to poor families of government assistance- the delivery to hundreds of millions their own bank accounts.- how do you put a value on something like this, but it is essential for development from the ground up. More than missiles or other talk this has got to be the spirit of any development oriented administration in India. Ground up, big goals and rapid delivery and an apology for the difficulties that the people suffered earlier for lack of this infrastructure. For both China and India it is the same - moving quickly to make up for 100 years of colonial rule and stagnation. The Modi government has responded to rural farmer distress with support for guaranteed crop prices. As more young voters vote for the first time an important factor is how the new voters see the years ahead under either a government led by the BJP or by a patchwork of parties as the previous ruling Congress party depends on alliances with other parties with conflicting agendas or lack of rapid development agendas. The Modi government sees itself as setting the stage for the next phase of development that would change the economy through new infrastructure development and create jobs in construction and engineering, and other areas. The criticism is that not enough jobs were created in the first term. Yet bold infrastructure development targets such as transformed the Chinese economy could be the answer for job creation. The question then is who is better qualified to launch that effort based on its track record. The Congress party's main criticism is that it has to make alliances with parties that could stall development with conflicting agendas. The other is that in the the 2 years leading to the election of Mr. Modi the Congress led government of Manmohan Singh was stalled due to corruption charges, leading to a lack of decisionmaking at the highest levels, and stalled efforts for the rapid development that could deliver the kind of jobs India needs.  Young Indians would like to see growth first and foremost, only something rivalling China's transformation over 2 decades can do this. It should be kept in mind that China poured more concrete in the 21st century so far than all the concrete the United States poured in the 20th century, according to The Guardian report. The question then is who is best qualified and in a position to deliver this needed economic miracle.    ...