Only 4 women among 144 alumni feted with COEP Abhimaan Awards in last 3 decades

According to data available on the website of the alumni association of COEP, it was last in 2016, that a woman alumna—Jaya Panvalkar, an engineering student from the 1972 batch– was recognised by the institute.

No woman, who has graduated from the institute in the last 40 years (batch 1982 and onwards), has been felicitated, unlike 16 of their male counterparts, in any of the ceremonies to date.

Apart from Jaya Panvalkar, the other women alumna that the institute has felicitated with the coveted award are Padma Shri Lila Poonawalla, who graduated as one of the first woman mechanical engineers of the country in 1967, Vaijayanti Bendre (1970 batch) in 2001 and Meghana Atre (1981 batch) in 2008.

In the 31st edition of these awards held on Thursday, six alumni were felicitated by Minister of Higher Technical Education Chandrakant Patil in the presence of Vice Chancellor S D Agashe, chairman of Board of Governance Pramod Chaudhari, chairman of the Alumni Association of COEP Bharat Gite, among others.

However, the problem seems to be more in the engineering ecosystem than in the college administrators who comprise the jury, as pointed out by the chairman of the alumni association.

These awards, divided into categories like industry, social work, education, national services, administrative and even spirituality, are based on nominations. One can nominate themself or be nominated by a friend. The awardees are picked out from this pool of nominees by a jury comprising the chairman of the alumni association, Vice Chancellor of COEP and some other members of the board.

Admitting the lack of women awardees, Bharat Gite said, “Even if there was one nominee, we would have immediately chosen her because we know that we have not been able to do justice to this inequality in the past few years.But this time, we did not have even one such nomination. The problem is that we get no more than one woman nominee and that too only once in a while.”

The glaring lack of women on stage, in stark contrast to the audience which comprised past and present students and teachers, was not lost on COEP Abhimaan awardee and Mumbai’s Police Commissioner Vivek Phansalkar.

While addressing the audience, the IPS officer said, “I think the governing council needs to focus on gender inclusivity in the field of engineering. We have greats like Sudha Murthy and many girls here who would like to emulate her.”