Reflections of an OWSD Prize Awardee

Recently presented with an OWSD Award for Young Women Scientists, Janet Ayobami Ademola, senior lecturer in physics at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, says that the most important outcome of such international recognition is the encouraging effect it will have on younger generations of scientists, especially women.
“Young women need to be encouraged to take up science courses,” she continues. “In African countries, science, and in particular physics, is perceived as a male domain. Women look at it as a very demanding field of study, almost incompatible with household and family duties that they are required to carry out.”
Ademola is one of the pioneer researchers in Nigeria to study the prevalence of natural radionuclides in building materials and the radiological hazard associated with them. Through her work she is contributing to the production of data in these little studied sectors, as well as to the call for the adoption of official guidelines and regulations that prescribe allowable levels of radionuclides in building material use in Nigeria. While such regulations are the norm in many developed countries, they are non-existent in most African countries.
Her findings have been published on several regional and international journals and she is also a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Grant for Staff Development (2006 edition) and Georg Forster Research Fellowship Programme for Experienced Researchers of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2009). By making the most of such opportunities to travel to laboratories in other countries, she explains, she is able to carry her work forward while keeping her roots in her home country.
And despite her commitment to her scientific research, Ademola has never left aside her role as a mentor and has constantly acted as a motivator for her women students.
“I simply share with them my life experience. I want to show that being a wife, mother of four children and a physical scientist at the same time is tough but achievable”, she says.
She also adds that most of her married students usually have the full support of their husbands: “On average, the husbands are very collaborative. Indeed, it often happens that they drop into my office to hand over their wives’ papers”.
Ademola herself has consistently received the encouragement of her own family. She also received sympathy from her male colleagues when, in 1994, she was the first woman to be appointed as a lecturer in physics at the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology.
“In my undergraduate days at the University of Ibadan I met only two women lecturers in physics. Nowadays, the situation has slightly improved, we are 5 out of 20 lecturers. It is evident that more efforts are needed to attract higher number of talented women into academic careers in physics,” she concludes. “In this regard, the award of the OWSD prize will hopefully have some lasting effect.”