Vinay Kumar
More women in STEM is great news. But policy has to look at why most of them don’t make it to the top
That over 10,000 girls have cracked JEE Advanced exam to study in IITs, NITs or IIITs, is no ordinary milestone. It demonstrates – more than any hifalutin platitudes – the impact of policy in helping youngsters realise their potential. The policy, here, is the IITs’ supernumerary seats for girls, a scheme started from 2018. A seat allocation authority increased the proportion of women students in premier engineering colleges by 20%, as a leg-up to correct a traditional gender skew across premier engineering colleges. Seats were increased proportionately across disciplines; existing seats left as is – a gender-neutral bloc.
The outcome of the push is evident. More women have made the cut. Most importantly, women who entered via the supernumerary seats scheme, graduated with GPAs at par with men. Such performance has silenced critics, the tendency always to berate and view with animosity, policy attempts to correct gender ratios in educational and professional fields. So, it seems that India could soon have a robust pipeline of women engineers too, across fields. Women signing up for STEM fields has grown slowly, but steadily. In 2024, UGC boasted that the number of women STEM doctorates had gone up “by 107 % in the last 10 years”. Currently, 42% of STEM graduates are women.
But, alas, what after? An E&Y 2026 study showed the grim reality for women STEM grads. Almost 30% of entry-level STEM employees are women, but their number crashes to 18% at director level, which dwindles to 12%-14% at VP and C-level positions. Another study showed women STEM grads hold a mere 17% faculty positions. Why? It is brutal how societal expectations (marriage break, childbearing, elder care) and male-dominated workplace cultures (motherhood as penalty, inflexible workhours, unfair promotion practices), see highly qualified women scientists and researchers simply fall off the map, finding little support from either family or profession, to return to their STEM career, which is ever-challenging, and demands both time and commitment. So, for the 10,000 women who this year enter premier engineering and R&D set-ups, what’s the plan? Only policy can ensure this highly qualified workforce isn’t lost, simply because the workplace couldn’t accommodate women.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d44151-024-00212-6
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
