Mind The Gap: Women Make Up Less Than 15% Of India's STEM Academia

The tide is turning in the higher education landscape of India as more women are boldly stepping into the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Yet, the gender disparity in the faculty at these institutes remains a burgeoning concern. A recent study by BiasWatchIndia revealed that only 13.5% of India's STEM faculty are female. This data not only reflects a systemic inequality that women in India have endured for ages but also expresses a missed opportunity for innovation and success. The study published on March 30 in the journal Communications Biology was carried out to track the performance of women across all aspects of STEM careers.

The study called for a more inclusive environment at STEM institutes in India, pointing out the stark difference in the female-to-male faculty ratio. Top-ranked institutes like Indian Institute of Technology, Indian Institute of Science, and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) showed an alarmingly low percentage of women.

Study Reveals Gender Gap In STEM Faculty

Bridging the gender gap in STEM is essential to not only foster representation of all genders but also reel in diverse perspectives. The BiasWatchIndia study found that women's participation in STEM academia and conferences remains low. The study moreover recorded high level of attrition among women in STEM careers.

The paper was authored by Shruti Muralidhar, founder-editor of BiasWatchIndia and Vaishnavi Ananthanarayanan, EMBL Australia Group leader at the medical science school of Sydney’s University of New South Wales. The study scrutinised faculty data between June 2020 and December 2021 from the websites of 98 institutes and 417 conferences.

The paper states that it demands the need for "clearly earmarked resources and the will and a strong commitment to equity from the leadership of Indian science universities/institutions.” Muralidhar told the news outlet The Print, "There is a general lack of awareness and understanding of and sensitivity to the problems of women and minorities in STEM."

She also pointed out that STEM careers in India lack "centralised funding, leading to fewer positions and more competition for (available) positions," The researcher stated that the reasons for this are "both explicit and implicit biases in all professional spaces that Indian women in STEM also have to navigate through”.

Women In Each Field

Less than 1 in 5 STEM faculty members in India are women. The BiasWatchIndia study shows that women's participation in biology faculty is the highest at 25.5% of all female STEM academicians while their participation in engineering remains the lowest at 9.2%. This is followed by chemistry (11.5%), computer science (12%), and physics (13%), and mathematics (15.8%).

Among the eight highest-ranked universities and colleges studied, IIT-Kanpur had the lowest proportion of women at just 7%. At IISc, women made up only 8% of the faculty. TIFR had 9% of women faculties while IIT-Kharagpur had 11% of women faculties. IIT-Roorkee, IIT-Bombay, and IIT-Delhi fared better, with 12% of their faculties found to be women.

In the realm of STEM conferences, biology once again fared the best. The study showed that 39% of the 293 conferences studied in Phase 1 (June 2020 to August 2021) and 26% of 124 conferences studied in Phase 2 (August 2021 to March 2023 in Phase 2 ) did not have a single woman on the panel. The study endorses publicly calling out institutes for overlooking women.

Researcher Muralidhar told The Print that they revealed the names of the institutes that lacked women panelists on social media, which significantly helped. "Publicly tagging and calling out organisers and other invited speakers for low or zero women speaker representation seems to have a positive overall effect on the proportion of conferences," the paper stated.