In 2014, Maryam Mirzakhani became the first woman to win the Fields Medal, considered the "Nobel Prize of Math", for her contributions to the dynamic and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces.

Mirzakhani's incredible accomplishment garnered worldwide attention largely due to her being the 'first woman' to win the most coveted prize in mathematics – a field we rarely associate women with. But the truth is, much like this Iranian mathematical genius, women around the world are achieving many such 'firsts' in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). More and more women are not only challenging stereotypes of STEM strictly being men's domain but are also increasingly being recognised for their work in areas where women remain severely underrepresented.

Dr. Tanzima Hashem, Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), did just that when she became the first Bangladeshi to win the 2017 OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Award in engineering science. Along with four other women, Dr Tanzima received the award in Boston last month for her work in developing computational approaches to protect the privacy of people accessing location-based services.

While the terms 'computational' and 'location-based services' may throw one off at first glance, it isn't that hard to comprehend, once Dr Tanzima explains the focus of her research and why this is an important area of study in an era where smartphones and apps have become an integral part of our daily life. 

"A commuter may want to know the nearest bus stop from his or her current location using a GPS-enabled smartphone, or a group of friends (located in different places) using location-based social networking sites such as Foursquare may want to find a restaurant that minimises their travel distance. Location-based applications optimise the utilisation of transport resources, reduce fuel consumption, and allow people to plan their daily activities with convenience," she says.

As we already know, the internet is a double-edged sword that has not only revolutionised communication and technology but also presented novel threats such as cyber crimes and invasion of online privacy. Location-based services are no different and pose a similar threat. 

Dr Tanzima aspires to find innovative solutions to adequately protect user privacy while ensuring that the growth of location-based services is not hindered. She goes on to explain, "Privacy threat is an important barrier for the proliferation of these services. Frequent access to location-based services enables a service provider to generate a complete user profile that does not only include a complete history of the user's movements but also reveals what type of information has been accessed, where and when. My goal is to allow people to have control over sensitive data about their health, habits and whereabouts while accessing location-based services."

Introduced to this research area during her PhD at the University of Melbourne, Dr Tanzima hopes to apply her expertise in solving real life problems in Bangladesh, particularly with regard to safety of women in public areas and workers in garment factories and textile industries – two pressing concerns in a country plagued with issues of women's security and labour rights. 

She elaborates, "I am working to develop technology based solutions to collect harassment data and workplace feedback in a manner that preserves privacy. My plan is to build an application that will help women to find safe paths to travel from one place to another by using harassment data. On the other hand, workplace feedback can help the government to monitor the actual scenarios of workplaces."

Women like Dr Tanzima account for a fraction of academics, researchers and professionals at advanced career levels in STEM disciplines globally. In Asia, a higher proportion of women are found in science-oriented fields such as medicine, biology, and pharmacy compared to math-oriented ones such as physics, engineering and computer science, according to a study by UNESCO. Women are the most underrepresented not at the entry into science or math education as children, but in graduate studies, due to the "leaky pipe" of career development so that at every step up the ladder women's presence becomes rarer. 

"Balancing family and career is one of the main challenges that women face in our society. I saw many female students of potential who had dreams of pursuing higher studies in computer science but because of family issues, lack of child care centres, and social restrictions, their dreams never materialised," states Dr Tanzima.  

Girls and women in Bangladesh face the additional challenge of overcoming sociocultural barriers and perceptions related to education – women don't make good engineers and scientists; the end goal of higher education for girls is brighter marriage prospects; and a myriad of other such preconceptions about what women should study and why.

Dr Tanzima faced a similar situation when she was selected for admission in both Dhaka Medical College and BUET. "My relatives and friends suggested that I go to medical school as in our country there is a social belief that a woman does well as a doctor instead of as an engineer. Fortunately, my parents were very supportive and because I was so passionate about mathematics and problem solving, I decided to study CSE," she confesses. 

The world today faces a multitude of complex challenges – from climate change to global health epidemics to rising inequality – whose solutions are even more complex. The role of STEM education has never been more instrumental in a technology-driven world where some of the fastest-growing, lucrative occupations are in STEM fields.

According to Dr Tanzima, the future of women and STEM goes hand in hand. "Participation of women in STEM is essential because diversity is a key factor for innovation and development. It is not possible to make scientific advancement by leaving half the population behind," she puts it simply.

The silver lining in all of this is that, like Dr Tanzima Hashem, more and more women in STEM fields in developing countries are not only defying all odds of global and national statistics, but also excelling at what they do. In redefining the course of technological and scientific progress, and even history itself, where women's contributions have been little recorded in books and archives, women in STEM are working towards a future in which their presence becomes the norm and their profession is no longer followed by the prefix of their gender.

The writer is a member of the editorial team at The Daily Star.