I've never really talked about this openly. I was too scared and too uncomfortable. Given what's happened recently with the death of George Floyd and the response to that, I've been asked about these issues more. The simple answer is that yes, in the military, I was discriminated against. It wasn't always open, so it was often subtle, but I felt it was there. Some people made assumptions about me just because of the color of my skin.

Statistically speaking, I am certain I have suffered from discrimination through my career. I’ve seen plenty of studies showing that men are awarded more research grants than women, that men are promoted more quickly than women and that men have higher salaries than women. I don’t think that I’m outside of the norm. And if we don’t believe that women are less capable, on average, than men, then by definition, I have been discriminated against.

In the United States, what I have experienced as a woman is gender discrimination. It is coincidental that the earliest recollection of gender discrimination that I experienced was made by a female professor when I was in graduate school. The female professor told me that I would not be able to finish my graduate programme because I got married and was pregnant in my first year of graduate school

[T]he evidence for discrimination in STEM is considerably more mixed than is often assumed. Certainly, many studies have found evidence of anti-female discrimination in STEM. At the same time, however, many other studies have failed to find such discrimination, or have found discrimination in favour of women.

Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.

Most professional women can recount ‘horror stories’ about discrimination they have suffered during their careers. My stories include social trivia as well as grand trauma. But some less common forms of discrimination came my way when, in mid-career, I married a colleague and we joined our professional lives just as fame (though not fortune) hit him. I watched as he was manufactured into an architectural guru before my eyes and, to some extent, on the basis of our joint work and the work of our firm.

Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.

Discrimination isn’t always gender, race or colour-based. The most damaging discrimination is of the mind and ideology. I was discriminated against by almost all my Bollywood friends, whom I used to hang around with because, like them, I also believed in a certain ideology but found it fake and alienated from reality, and elitist.

On two different occasions recently, (male) mathematicians asked me in all innocence: But you surely never suffered any discrimination?

I have been discriminated against by white people for being black, by black people for being gay, by gay people for being too fem. Did I let them stop me from getting to this chair?

In fairness, I didn’t come across anything like sex- for-marks but I did come across discrimination that was gender and racial-biased. Some people believe that if you are a woman or black, you cannot be really good (intelligent).

No discrimination was shown by the Japanese enemy in his treatment of the Negro or the Jew or the Mexican or the so-called Anglo-Saxon stock-he murdered them all irrespective of their religion, color, or politics. On the beachheads of Tarawa, Okinawa, or Guam there was no discrimination. Along the sandbanks of Anzio no discrimination was shown by the German or any other common enemy. But here in our own country by people who should know better, and do know better, discrimination at times becomes rampant. Even now, the ugly head of racial and religious prejudice shows itself too vividly to be ignored. To outlaw the discriminatory employment practices stemming from racial and religious bigotry is the new task which must now engage us.

Women do not enter a profession in significant numbers until it is physically safe. So until we care enough about men’s safety to turn the death professions into safe professions, we in effect discriminate against women. But when we overprotect women—and only women—it also leads to discrimination against women. …If [an employer works] for a large company for which quotas prevent discrimination, they find themselves increasingly hiring free-lancers rather than taking on a woman and therefore a possible sexual harassment lawsuit…

...And it was so ridiculous. And this was this thing about this teaching of a class and I've been told that I couldn't teach undergraduates because MIT students didn't believe scientific information spoken by a woman. And so I'd said, well, of course, everyone knows that. I had accepted it as normal because as soon as somebody said it, I realized, of course, it's true. I was able to see that women were so under-respected that students couldn't respect them enough. And so they were afraid to put an important course into the hands of a woman for fear the students would not be able to respect them.