As many as 26 per cent of the new entrants at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Hyderabad zone are women making the IIT achieve the best gender ratio among all IIT campuses across the country. The average percentage of females who joined the IITs this year stands at 19 per cent, while it is 26 per cent in the southern zone, reported Times of India. Further, the proportion of girls who register from the southern zone is almost 50 per cent of the total aspirants.
The Hyderabad zone which includes Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Puducherry saw a huge rise in the proportion of girls registering for IITs this year. Around 1,200 female students have joined the premier institutes this year. The increase was seen after the introduction of the supernumerary female quota across IITs, the report added. The number of women students in the 2023 batch at the IIT has more than tripled as compared to 2017.
The supernumerary female quota in the IITs was introduced five years ago. The decision was taken to improve female enrolment in the UG courses across IITs. Union Minister of State for Education Subhas Sarkar had earlier stated that there has been a consistent improvement in the enrollment of female students in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) courses following the introduction of the supernumerary seats. There has been a 20 per cent rise in women enrollment in 2021-22 as compared to 8 per cent in 2016. Enrolment of girls in NITs increased to nearly 22.1 per cent in 2021-22, Sarkar had said.
Now, almost every campus has an average of 19.7 per cent female students. This year’s batch saw as many as 3,411 female students joining the IITs. This number has more than tripled now when compared to 2017 when 995 female students had joined IITs. Out of the total, a third was in the IIT Hyderabad zone. In 2018, the quota for women saw an increase to 14 per cent, in 2019, it increased to 17 per cent, and in 2020, it was 20 per cent.
IIT Delhi now aims to achieve a 50:50 gender ratio on its campus, says director Rangan Banerjee. Academically, women are performing well, says he adding that since IITs are now becoming multi-disciplinary and “opening more programmes like design and public policy, we are seeing that a good diverse mix adds so much to the richness of the educational experience,” he said. Banerjee further added that the main goal is that gender becomes a non-issue.
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