Premier Institutions taking steps to draw more women students

Updated on: Friday, March 09, 2012

The commonality between all the IIMs and IITs is their skewed gender gender ratio. While girls are securing top ranks in many competitive exams today, this trend seems like an aberration.

If one looks for reasons fewer women students attempt the Joint Entrance Examination which is the process of getting through to IITs and hence fewer enter the institute according to Devang Khakhar, director, IIT-bombay. Debashis Chatterjee, director, IIM-Kozhikode, adds, "Traditionally, the number of women has been less than 10 per cent in any batch across all premier business schools in India. Though around 25 per cent of all CAT applicants are women, only around 10 per cent usually make it to the IIMs." Apart from these factors, social norms and the fact that parents do not want to send to their daughters away from the home city to study are some of the reasons for the poor representation of women in these institutes.

Many of these institutions are now taking steps to correct the imbalance with many IIMs awarding additional marks to women candidates appearing for CAT 2011. The primary motive was to have a healthy gender balance in their classrooms.

IIM Kozhikode has taken the lead in this endeavour by taking a number of measures to promote gender diversity in their classrooms. Chatterjee says, "IIM-K was the first IIM to meet the reservation norms even before the government made them mandatory. The institute has been increasingly giving emphasis on diversifying the concept of inclusive growth on a much larger and global scale. For the present batch of its postgraduate programme (class of 2013), the strength of women students is 36 per cent which is a national record for any B-school so far. The institute is able to achieve the gender diversity by adopting a suitable admission policy and criteria." The IITs are also not far behind. Informs Khakhar, "This year we have reduced the application fee for women appearing for the JEE and I believe a greater percentage of the applicants are women."

"A balanced batch contributes to a better learning experience. Girls bring in greater diversity both in the learning environment as well as the academic and social profiles. Women make better managers. They have learnt to be more competent in a diverse set of skills and attitudes - things that are required of managers. These include networking skills, social intelligence, empathy and environmental sensitivity. During the last summer placements, girls were better placed than boys," says Chatterjee. The diversity also helps breed creativity in the classrooms.

Gender power is slowly showing its way through With institutes going all out to reach out to women students,

Premier Institutions taking steps to draw more women students

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