India’s Female STEM Graduates Rank High Worldwide — So Why Is There Still Gender Disparity?
Education in India has now been free and compulsory for children aged 6 to 14 for over a decade since the Indian parliament passed a landmark Right to Education Act in August 2009. This act has been successful in that it has brought more girls back to school and drove their attention to typically male-dominated subjects such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Despite the increasing interest in the topics, the number of women entering the workplaces of them do not match. Indian women make up 40% of science undergraduates in India, but the small fraction of them moving into successful careers and top positions results in the loss of a talented and diversified workforce.
One of the major reasons for ongoing gender disparity are the social attitudes towards women in the STEM field. Many girls are made to feel they are not smart enough for STEM and that it comes more naturally to male counterparts. Studies by UNESCO have shown that women publish fewer research papers across the world and are paid less than their male colleagues — another issue that contributes to gender inequality.
More reasons arise earlier on in a woman’s academic life, such as the quality of the school she attends. Safety concerns, like access to sanitary toilets, are a part of a variety of obstacles. According to Sanitation First, many schools across the country have toilets that are in a state of disrepair and 400,000 of them are communal, meaning there are no separate facilities for girls.
Children have been known to skip breakfast before they go to school and not eat in break time at school to avoid using a toilet; leading to them missing important lessons due to fatigue. One head teacher also told Sanitation First that when a girl starts her period she usually has to go home, but she cannot walk home alone so another girl has to accompany her. That girl cannot then walk back to school alone, so a third girl has to leave school to accompany the other on the way back, totalling to three girls missing out on education because of inadequate facilities.
Another pressing reason is housework. Many girls who ideally should be in school have to carry the responsibility of caring for the house and younger siblings while parents go out to work; housework to this extent along with agricultural work are yet to be banned for children.
Unpaid care work in itself is a gender bias. The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights stated that around 40% of 15–18 year old girls were out of school, with 65% being engaged in household work. This report also found that girls that do roughly two hours of housework a day have less than a 70% probability of finishing secondary school.
The task of combating gender disparity is huge and should be shared across all genders. The education system needs modernising, combined with attitudes that break gender-typical roles. Supporting the growth of a diverse STEM workforce helps to strengthen India’s innovation and research capacity which is needed to find solutions to global challenges that matter to India and the world. Finishing secondary school has a great impact on the future life of the girl, as well as her children’s academic life.
The girls that transfer their skills from academics to a professional STEM career are unknowingly being role models for the next generation of female innovators in STEM, which is needed to end the gender disparity that continues to exist.
Author: Sophie Hall
