The increasing representation of women in the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) marks a pivotal moment in the journey toward greater inclusivity and gender equity in India’s premier institutions of higher education. It is also welcome affirmation of the larger and irreversible shift in society that top-down institutional reforms can help make deeper and wider. Data obtained by this newspaper under the Right to Information Act has revealed that six years since the implementation of a supernumerary quota of 20 per cent for women in undergraduate engineering programmes, in which extra seats were created instead of reserving them within the existing pool, IITs are witnessing a significant surge in female students. At IIT-Kanpur, the number of women rose from 908 in 2017 to 2,124 in 2024; IIT-Roorkee saw a 76.36 per cent jump between 2019-20 and 2024. IITs in Chennai, Mumbai, Guwahati and Kharagpur, too, saw commensurate jumps in enrolment.
The upsurge reflects a positive correlation between individual ambition and availability of opportunities that is a result of good-faith affirmative action. Initiated in 2018, the quota in IITs goes beyond numbers in reshaping an academic space that has historically been male-dominated. There have been infrastructure upgrades in the form of more hostels, washrooms and recreational facilities for women. Some campuses have a special open-door policy for female aspirants and their parents to learn about campus life. These are all welcome departures from a masculine imagination of the classroom where women were expected to man up or ship out, where safeguards against everyday sexism were few and far between. The change challenges the old narrative that STEM is a field for men, and signals a future where women’s voices, ideas, and innovations will be indispensable in shaping the country’s intellectual and technological future. Given that of the total enrolled students in engineering and technology — according to the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) for 2021-22 — women still comprise only 11.3 lakh, while 27.6 lakh are men in the undergraduate programmes, it is crucial to bridge the gap.
