While top 4 world universities (Oxford, MIT, Cambridge, Harvard) are led by women, Indian varsities have a long way to go

However, in the premier institutions in India, the representation of women in important positions is still in a poor state. In the engineering domain, the only woman who has managed to enter the elite ‘male dominated club’ of IIT directors is Preeti Aghalayam, an IIT Madras faculty, who is heading the recently announced first foreign campus at Zanzibar in Tanzania.

“Women are a minority in this industry, but things are slowly changing. It is important for women to be able to stand up in this world of men and be in leadership positions. I am glad for myself, but I know that if we look at our kind at large, it is not enough for a few of us to be given a title or opportunity. It has to broaden the base, both in terms of numbers and the agency that we are given. We are equal to men, but the opportunities we have access to, and in our minds and what is articulated to us in our families in terms of aspirations, there shouldn’t be any holding back. It’s a difficult change, but one that we need,” she said.

Dr Darshna Banker, Assistant Professor at Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management, Delhi, in her two-year-old research, found that the number of institutions led by women in 2015, 2018, and 2021 was 54, 63, and 110, respectively. The outcome was analysed with a total of 810, 1008, and 1151 institutions categorised into five different groups, including central universities, state universities, state private universities, deemed universities, and Institutions of National Importance.

“Women held either a vice-chancellor position in a university system or a director position in an autonomous institution. The percentage of women in leadership positions was 6.67 per cent in 2015, 6.25 per cent in 2018, and 9.56 per cent in 2021,” informed Banker.

See the following table:

There is a steady increase in leadership positions in the Indian varsities. (Research credit: Darshana Banker)

Indianexpress.com found that at present, in the 20 Indian Institutes of Management, only two women are at the director’s level — Archana Shukla at IIM Lucknow and Vinita S Sahay at IIM Bodh Gaya. Of the 23 IITs (excluding the recently announced two IITs global campuses), none are headed by a woman. Only in two NITs did women lead the educational institute with Dr G Aghila at NIT Tiruchirappalli and SK Pandey at NIT Puducherry.

Unlike the poor state of technical and management institutions, the research found that the central universities had the highest ratio of women in leadership positions, followed by state universities in India. Surprisingly, the Institutes of National Importance (INIs), such as IITs, IIMs, AIIMS, and IISERs, showed a fluctuating trend with 5.48 per cent of women in leadership positions in 2015, 5.66 per cent in 2018, and 4.55 per cent in 2021.

Indianexpress.com checked the list of top 10 central universities (as per NIRF rankings 2023) and found only Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) have women in important positions. Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit heads as the VC of the JNU and Prof Najma Akhtar for Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. These two universities are ranked as the best in the country and have been the centre of debate for the past few years. Incidentally, ever since these two women have taken over the charge, there have been no untoward incidents reported on the campuses. “When a woman is leading, the atmosphere is more peaceful and people have a lot of respect,” Jamia Millia Islamia VC, Najma Akhtar told indianexpress.com.

“While at the entry level, women are getting posts, at a higher level they are being ignored. Call it patriarchy or misogyny, a woman has to be 20 times better than her male counterpart to get the same designation,” JNU vice chancellor Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit explains the poor show of women in higher education.

“If they are assertive, they are termed aggressive. Unfortunately, many in the higher political positions believe that let men are better performers,” said Pandit.

In 2019, Najma Akhtar became the first woman vice-chancellor of a central university. “In India, we start a little but when we do, there is no stopping us, and the same thing is with female leadership in this country. We keep on talking about women’s emancipation, but what we need is women leadership development,” she said.

“The IIT now has a female leader, and while it is a great step, it is a late step,” she added.

Former IIT Delhi director, Ramgopal Rao, also shared the thought process of Akhtar and added that the reason it took so long for IITs to welcome women leaders is that “till now the number of female engineers was very less in India. Traditionally, there were very few female students in the IITs, but that outlook is slowly changing and the women faculty is slowly increasing to 17-18 per cent. With this change, the IITs will also start welcoming more female leaders now. At IIT Delhi, we had a woman dean a few years ago, and the change is being observed at a bigger level now,” Rao said.

Talking about why it took this long for central universities to bring in female leaders, Akhtar added this should not be seen as a ‘fight’. “It is about us being there. Whether you take me or you don’t take me, I am there and I am equally qualified. Women who are capable of handling an institute exist and should be identified. Women need to keep working hard, keep applying for positions as their right and a change will come for sure,” Akhtar said.

The table presents the data on women’s leadership in 2021.

As per the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2020-21, 84,226 women and 1,40,221 men are reported in permanent academic positions (including professor and equivalent, reader and associate, lecturer/assistant professor, demonstrator/tutor) in universities or institutions like universities in the country. Of these, only 3,008 women and 7,173 men are reported in permanent academic positions in the Institutes of Eminence.