Shailaja Paik’s Wikipedia page does not mention that she grew up in the slums around Pune.  It does mention that she is the winner of the 2024 MacArthur ‘genius’ grant.  Shailaja is a historian of modern India who focuses on the intersections of class, sexuality and caste. “I wanted to connect with women who I wanted to study,” says Shailaja in the MacArthur Foundation’s Youtube channel. “But to write and to understand the stories of the marginalized, the excluded, you need a different method.”

The same could be said of the organisation that awarded her this hefty $800,000 grant paid out over five years. In the early years after its institution in 1981, the MacArthur grants were heavily skewed in favour of white men. A studytracking inclusiveness in the fellowships found that 63% of the awardees were male between 1981-2018.  Around 2018, a host of grant-giving foundations in America including the MacArthur and the Guggenheim announced that they were going to make a conscious effort to be inclusive. Since then, women dominate the MacArthur grant list. Every year, at least 50% (and usually more) of the grants go to women. This year, for instance, 12 out of 22 Fellows are women. The same applies to the Guggenheim Fellowships.  In recent years, close to 50% of the grants are awarded to women.

How did the MacArthur Foundation with an annual budget of about $160 million, a staff of around 250 people and a jury of about a dozen become so spectacularly inclusive not just in terms of gender parity but also in every other domain? The answer is both obvious and very hard to achieve: by acknowledging their bias, and actively seeking to overcome it. Consider the DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) Commitment that the MacArthur has written out. It begins with humility, acknowledges historical biases and clearly lists out steps that the organisation is taking to overcome it.  A lot of it has to do with the composition of leadership, staff and the jury.  It is no coincidence that Marlies Carruth, the director of the MacArthur Fellows took up her role in 2021.  She happens to be a woman of colour.

Inclusion matters, not because it is nice to have but because in today’s world, it is vital to have diverse voices who speak in rainbow tongues and tones. If you have a small jury of folks who speak in the same rational tongue, without scope for challenge, then you end up in the same spot that most mature foundations were in their early years – where they said they were just and fair, when in fact they were largely giving prizes, awards and fellowships to men who looked and spoke like them. The minute a jury starts talking about the “right fit” and “appropriate” topics, you know that they are going to be safe rather than inclusive. Not that you need to burn the house down in order to include more women. Quite the opposite.

In August 2020, the Guggenheim took several steps including sending its 200 staff members on a ‘listening tour’ to ensure inclusion in its grants and awards. Its document emphasizes specific steps but also uses data to ensure accountability. Essentially, the organisation changed their framework.

Bangalore has a number of organisations that are in the business of promoting scholarship, either through grants, conferences, awards or fellowships. Each of them states that they espouse and promote excellence. Perhaps they do. But the way this is done, the way money is disbursed does not reflect values of parity and equity along with excellence— and we have just seen that this is possible, at least in America.

In order to be just and equitable in today’s male-dominated India requires courage and a force of will. It requires actively seeking out diversity – in the leadership and in jury composition. Every time I speak about this topic with men, they punt the problem and solution back at me. They have the same tired response: we try our best to be fair, but there just aren’t enough women of merit. Really? They tell me to offer suggestions to correct the situation. Sure, our keynote speakers are disproportionately male, they will say. Why don’t you supply a list of good women candidates? This approach assumes that gender is a woman’s issue and that equity is an accommodation that men make towards including women. To be inclusive is to enlarge the spectrum of what is possible. It opens your mind.

To value justice and parity requires leaders of organisations to change how they think. It requires that they first acknowledge that every jury and every board is biased. The best way to correct bias is to hire more women at every level: in the staff, leadership, board and juries. Why did it take Shailaja Paik to go to America to be acknowledged a genius? More crucially to India, how many Shailajas are organisations failing to spot, fund and promote?

Today, both the MacArthur and the Guggenheim are headed by women. Their staff composition and the recipients of their prestigious grants and awards reflect the parity that these organisations espouse and aspire towards. The effects of this parity will be visible only years later, but for now, what a glorious world it is for the young women who aspire to be “geniuses.”

Pity this is not happening in India.