Woman engineer at the centre of India's space mission | Hacker News Reader

Woman engineer at the centre of India's space mission

bbc.co.uk

28 pointsghosh10 comments

TIL Europe is a nation.

To be fair they also listed the Soviet Union as a nation. "Nation" is an ambiguous concept (or we just lack a proper term for multi-national alliances that transcend "normal" international cooperation and become meta-nations).

How the heck could Europe the continent be considered a nation? All of these nations are on the same landmass that someone decided to call a continent, and now they're all magically multi-national alliances?

Should have typed EU instead.

I guess for India its good news that this is news.

It would be good news if this wasn't news.

Sadly India isn't nowhere near a level where this is a problem worth worrying about. It's still okay for them to celebrate womans success stories there since they are so rare.

"Woman engineer..." is an awkward title.

Would you say, "man engineer"?

Better: "Female engineer..." or "The woman at the centre..."

Best of all would be just use the BBC's original title: "India's Mars scientist and other working lives". (If that title doesn't elicit as many up-votes, too bad.)

Yeah I know I'm being the Politically Correct Police. And I realize"international English" might not have these nuances. But I think's worth pointing out, so I did.

EDIT: Great article and thanks for sharing it!

This headline is the other side of the "why are girls not interested in science and technology" argument. We shouldn't have to call it out like being a "woman engineer" is different than just an "engineer." At least the article is closer to agnostic about it, but I wonder if they'd have called out the work/home balance and her struggles with being a good dad if the situation were reversed.

Just the other day another HN user was berating me for using the term "female", which he felt ought only to be used to specify sex and not refer to an actual person.

My point: there'll always be people who disagree on the appropriate word to use in this context :)

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