By – Kalpesh Banker, Managing Partner at EduShine Search Partner
The higher education scenario in India today is at a Crossroads. While employment generation, competency mapping, and entrepreneurship development are critical, equally pressing is the need to have more women in leadership positions. A survey conducted by EduShine Search Partners found that out of 1352 HEIs in India including IITs, IIMs, public, private, and deemed universities, only 152 are headed by women. This translates into an abysmally low ratio of 11.24%, clearly underlining the lack of gender diversity in the leadership positions in HEIs.
The low participation of females in HEIs indicates the structural flaw and deep bias that continues to run into our society. In a similar survey in 2021, EduShine found the ratio of female participation in the leadership position at 9.56%. The current survey shows an increase of around 2% although at 11.24%, even today much is left to be desired. Especially when one starts making comparisons. In the US, UK, and Australia, 25% of the women head the HEIs with Brazil standing out at an exceptional ratio of 47.3%. Just so you know, around 25% of the world’s top 200 universities are headed by women.
Deliberating on the reason behind this low participation ratio, Kalpesh Banker, Managing Partner at EduShine Search Partners says, “There is a pressing need to undertaker structural reforms and project their success stories so that next-gen get inspired to achieve excellence in the field of education,”
One bright spot in the results of the survey is the performance of the Government Institutions. Central Universities with 14.04% women leaders outperformed deemed universities (13.76%) and state public universities (13.2%). The performance of private Universities is just about average (9.18%) while Institutes of National Importance (INI) are stacked at the bottom with 8.53%.
The worrisome statistic from the survey is the complete absence of women’s leadership in the technical domain – not even a single IIT is headed by a women leader. The scenario is not very different in the case of premier management institutes with only 2 out of 21 IIMs headed by the women. Similarly, only 1 has women at the helm of the affairs when it comes to AIIMS which are total 15 in the country.
“The low enrollment of women in technical education explains the complete absence of women leadership in technical institutes,” Kalpesh reasons, “this explains that out of 120 IITs, IIITs, NITs, and IISER, only 2 (1 NIT and 1 IIIT) are headed by women.”
A multi-pronged approach is required to increase the women leaders ratio in HEIs in India. This entails combining policy measures with socioeconomic reforms to push for enriching the diversity at top leadership positions. Summarily, the time has come to join the forces and put in decisive efforts so that gender diversity in HEIs in India reaches a respectable figure.