Women Scientists From South Africa

"She replied 'to those who argued that women did not want independence' with a rhetorical question that '"If the bird does like its cage and does like its sugar and will not leave it, why keep the door so very carefully shut?"'6"

"Although access and benefit sharing has encouraged more equitable research partnerships in certain cases, from early on it became clear that that commercial demand for genetic resources was insufficient to incentivise biodiversity conservation."

"Environments can be created where women feel they belong, and we can see from the 20 years of CAPRISA’s existence how creating a supportive space for women has enabled a lot of women to thrive, to make their contributions and be constantly making cutting-edge contributions. So this is a concrete example. It’s not just rhetoric; it's not idealism that we can make it happen, and we need to illustrate that more and more because that means inclusivity at all levels, which bodes well for human security and planetary health."

"The idea behind access and benefit sharing policy is laudable: it was created to try to harness the economic benefits of biodiversity and indigenous knowledge as a way to achieve economic and social justice, and to fund biodiversity conservation."

"We can’t think of problems in the global south as just problems for the global south."

"We focused on developing and testing technologies that empowered women."

"And it’s not a token affirmative action process, but creating the space for women’s voices to be heard, women to contribute in the context of complex challenges that face us is no longer a luxury – we need all voices heard and opportunities created for all to contribute."

"We have to balance mission-oriented investments with curiosity investments, because the discoveries from curiosity research enable the innovation for mission-driven science. Undertaking biomedical research is high-risk, and more often than not does not produce the desired outcomes. However, we learn and understand the phenomenon better and move forward incrementally. This persistence and perseverance is a hallmark of scientific endeavours together with vigorous debates and discussions of findings."

"When solutions are not shared fairly or equitably, the pathogen thrives, as we witnessed during COVID-19, and another example where sharing information openly as South African scientists did during the emergence of the Omicron variant resulted in a travel ban by several countries in the Global North for the entire southern African region."

"When we come together with unity of purpose, we can achieve great things."

"Women continue to inspire me to persist with my scientific endeavors. While some progress has been made, much more remains to be done to ensure a non-sexist and just society."

"For most of my life I thought about science and its application to leaving people better off, so I wanted to be a scientist and do something that would help people."

"The vulnerability of young women is very much tied into gender power differences in society."

"As far as women go, there's a lot more we still need to do."

"People see certain things and draw conclusions that are actually valid for the data they have. But then somebody else goes to investigate, maybe at a different time or using a bit of a different approach, collects a different set of data, and they get a different answer."

"Once you engage the people who are managing a system, they can change the way they're thinking about it and actually influence the future, so it's very interactive."

"This dream is rapidly becoming a reality through the development of the CST, which like other leading sustainability centres globally is pioneering new inter- and transdisciplinary institutional structures. It is also helping to position Stellenbosch University as a national and international leader in the fast-emerging sustainability arena."

"Exploring pathways to reach such futures is, I think, one of the most exciting and important research areas in the sustainability field, and where the broader CST team and I plan to focus much of our future work."

"The framework we're using assumes the planet, and human societies that live upon it, are complex and constantly evolving, so we need to continually learn about and adapt to these ongoing changes."

"In one way, in Africa, we have an advantage because we're behind everyone else on the development trajectory." Now is the time to think more cleverly about different models for how poorer countries could develop in a completely different way that doesn't have such a high impact on the environment as has happened in most other places."

"As a relatively young woman in a male dominated senior leadership environment, it can sometimes feel difficult to be taken seriously and, consequently, to believe in oneself. So this is a big confidence booster in my intellectual leadership and a green light to venture out and continue forging new pathways."

"Balancing the demands of raising a young family with the demands of research and students can be tough, and a supportive partner and family make a huge difference. The COVID pandemic has highlighted some key gender inequalities, but also opened up some new possibilities for flexibility in the way we work that could facilitate greater engagement of women in senior research and leadership positions."

"I would like to point out that all the information we have gathered, all the observations we have made, have resulted from exploring the unknown."

"I feel that many of us are often not open to seeing the bigger picture. Perhaps, in this era of information inundation, we prefer or feel more comfortable forgetting how much we still don’t know."

"Life on Mars will be a precious and fragile resource, and I believe morality there will be defined by a deep appreciation for life and all that’s needed to sustain it, and I believe that this attitude will filter down to Earth."

"Two views on the scope of technology have pervaded (and shaped) studies of technology, reflecting the different claims to generalizability that researchers have intended with their work. The one set of studies has focused on technology as "hardware," that is, the equipment, machines, and instruments that humans use in productive activities, whether industrial or informational devices."

"The approach that dominates organizational theory, teaching, and practice for most of the twentieth century looked at organizations from the top-down, starting with a view of the CEO as the "leader" who shapes the organization's strategy, structure, culture, and performance potential. The nature of work and the role of the workforce enter the analysis much later, after considerations of technology and organization design have been considered. However, if the key source of value in the twenty-first-century organization is to be derived from the workforce itself, an inversion of the dominant approach will be needed. The new perspective will start not at the top of the organization, but at the front lines, with people and the work itself — which is where value is created. Such an inversion will lead to a transformation in the management and organization of work workers, and knowledge. This transformation was signalled by McGregor, but we must go further."

"This paper develops a new theoretical model with which to examine the interaction between technology and organizations. Early research studies assumed technology to be an objective, external force that would have deterministic impacts on organizational properties such as structure. Later researchers focused on the human aspect of technology, seeing it as the outcome of strategic choice and social action. This paper suggests that either view is incomplete, and proposes a reconceptualization of technology that takes both perspectives into account. A theoretical model-- the structurational model of technology--is built on the basis of this new conceptualization, and its workings explored through discussion of a field study of information technology. The paper suggests that the reformulation of the technology concept and the structurational model of technology allow a deeper and more dialectical understanding of the interaction between technology and organizations. This understanding provides insight into the limits and opportunities of human choice, technology development and use, and organizational design. Implications for future research of the new concept of technology and structurational model of technology are discussed."

"Technology - and its relationship to organizational structures, processes, and outcomes - has long been of interest to organizational researchers. Over the years, different research perspectives on technology have developed in parallel with research perspectives on organizations - for example, contingency theory (Woodward 1965, Galbraith 1977, Carter 1984, Daft and Lengel 1986), strategic choice models (Child 1972, Buchanan and Boddy 1983, Davis and Taylor 1986, Zuboff 1988), Marxist studies (Braverman 1974, Edwards 1979, Shaiken 1985, Perrolle 1986), symbolic interactionist approaches (Kling 1991, Prasad 1993), transaction-cost economics (Malone et al. 1987, Ciborra 1993); network analyses (Barley 1990, Burkhardt and Brass 1990, Rice and Aydin 1991), practice theories (Suchman 1987, Button 1993, Hutchins 1995, Orr 1996), and structurational models (Barley 1986, Orlikowski 1992, DeSanctis and Poole 1994)."

"As both technologies and organizations undergo dramatic changes in form and function, organizational researchers are increasingly turning to concepts of innovation, emergence, and improvisation to help explain the new ways of organizing and using technology evident in practice. With a similar intent, I propose an extension to the structurational perspective on technology that develops a practice lens to examine how people, as they interact with a technology in their ongoing practices, enact structures which shape their emergent and situated use of that technology. Viewing the use of technology as a process of enactment enables a deeper understanding of the constitutive role of social practices in the ongoing use and change of technologies in the workplace. After developing this lens, I offer an example of its use in research, and then suggest some implications for the study of technology in organizations."

"Technology is built and used within certain social and historical circumstances and its form and functioning will bear the imprint of those conditions."

"Rather than positing design and use as disconnected moments or stages in a technology's lifecycle, the structurational model of technology posits artifacts as potentially modifiable throughout their existence. In attempting to understand technology as continually socially and physically constructed, it is useful to discriminate analytically between human action which affects technology and that which is affected by technology. I suggest that we recognize human interaction with technology as having two iterative modes: the design mode and the use mode. I emphasize that this distinction is an analytical convenience only, and that in reality these modes of interaction are tightly coupled."

"Technology has always been a central variable in organizational theory, informing research and practice. Despite years of investigative effort there is little agreement on the definition and measurement of technology, and no compelling evidence on the precise role of technology in organizational affairs. I will argue that the divergent definitions and opposing perspectives associated with technological research have limited our understanding of how technology interacts with organizations, and that these incompatibilities cannot be resolved by mutual concession. What is needed is a reconstruction of the concept of technology, which fundamentally re-examines our current notions of technology and its role in organizations."