A case in favour of the reservation of seats for women in the IITs

Shushman Choudhury
Aug 23, 2017 · 10 min read

One of the major stories in the recent past pertaining to the Indian higher education landscape has been the proposed move to have reservations for female students in the IITs. As one would expect, this has evoked a lot of responses from the public as well as current and former students. From the admittedly limited set of opinions I’ve seen online, consisting of comments on some online news articles, and posts on social media from my friends and peers, the majority seem to be opposed to this measure. I’ve wrestled internally with this matter for a long time myself, and given that, and what I’ve been seeing online, I thought I would put down some of my thoughts in writing, to try and motivate why I think this move might not as bad an idea as I’ve seen people fear it will be.

At the outset, I must say that this is not by any means intended to be a comprehensive case for this move that obliterates any arguments against it, nor does it have any new insights that nobody has thought of before. I have neither the ability, nor, perhaps more importantly, the desire to present such a case. This issue is a very nuanced and complex one, with roots in long-studied questions, and merits a discussion worthy of such. I should know — a few years ago I had been vehemently opposed to any such idea myself. Over time, after much reflection and discourse, I’ve come to change my point of view. The primary reason is that, with more exposure and perspective, I’ve thought more deeply on why I opposed such a move to begin with and realized that a lot of those reasons were based on low-hanging-fruit assumptions that I had not tried to question or analyse deeply.

As a result, in this article, rather than present an affirmative case, I’ll try to address some of the opposition that I have had myself and have seen expressed online. For lack of space I will not elaborate on all the opposition in detail but express them as short summaries, and try to address them. Also, I’ll address reservation for women in particular, though some of what I say can apply to other forms of reservation too. Once again, this is not meant to be a comprehensive answer to all arguments, probably because there isn’t one. There are most certainly legitimate concerns and potential side-effects of this move. My claim is that not all of the fears and concerns are as great as they seem at first glance, and once that is acknowledged, one may very well find that the benefits outweigh potential harms.

Before getting into any specifics, I think certain baseline facts should be acknowledged, which will not be up for dispute by me. Any discussion requires a shared set of facts. Usually this just refers to the objective reality of the world, which does not need to be up for dispute because doing so is unnecessary and distracts from the real issues to be discussed. But such are the times we live in, that I think it’s best if they are stated rather than assumed. Don’t worry — these facts are fairly self-evident so I’m not restricting the discussion in any meaningful sense.

The first baseline fact, let’s say Fact 1, is that all other factors remaining equal, women are on average no less competent than men at STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Mathematics) fields. There is no credible biological or scientific theory that says otherwise (like there might be for average physical traits, for instance), and plenty of examples to support this fact. Now, you might be somebody who doubts this, perhaps due to your correct observation that in terms of numbers, there are far fewer women in STEM careers than men (if you doubt Fact 1 because you genuinely believe women are intellectually inferior then nothing I say in this article will have any effect). That leads us to Fact 2, the true reason for your observation, which is that on average there are more historical, cultural and systemic barriers to Indian women entering and flourishing in STEM fields than for Indian men. This may be a harder pill to swallow for some, but if you are really honest with yourself, you almost certainly know someone who has faced this unpleasant truth. Now, it is okay to be skeptical of these facts, as I was myself, but if you really have an open mind, there is a wealth of easily available literature, studies and personal accounts available online to help you understand this, as it has helped me. I have neither the credentials nor the space in this article to go into disputing these facts.

With that out of the way, let me get down to exploring some of the reasons why I had opposed and others do oppose this measure, and try to analyse the objections more closely on various levels, while weaving in some affirmative arguments.

This move deprives more meritorious male candidates of seats, which leads to lower quality students being produced. It also gives women who do not face any disadvantages at the lower educational levels an easy path to the IITs.

This is perhaps the most frequently cited objection I have heard, albeit in some form of the other (like I said, I’ll group similar objections into a broad category for want of space). On the face of it, it does seem to be the direct result of seat reservation. But let’s look at it closely.

At a quantitative level, the seats are to be supernumerary, i.e. over and above the existing ones. In any case, the IITs tend to increase the number of seats in general every few years. Therefore, at a gross national level, it’s not necessarily harder to get in than in previous years — unless you account for more people sitting for the exam to begin with, which is not really in anybody’s hands anyway.

More deeply, even if the seats were not supernumerary, this argument is based on the assumption that the two JEE exams are necessarily a good indicator of merit and long-term aptitude for engineering. I don’t think that’s true, and I’m sure I am not the only one. As it stands, many students who score lower on the JEE, whatever the category, end up having a high CGPA in college, and becoming successful researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs. Of course, one’s professional success may not be itself be a great indicator of merit, but then in that view, the performance in the JEE is even less so, and so the ‘depriving merit’ argument is not then so strong. If a graduating student really is a substandard engineer, then they will typically be forced to improve because of the requirements of their job. True merit or aptitude tends to be borne out over longer periods of time, given opportunities to flourish. If only 10% (or less) of students entering the IITs are women, then they certainly are not getting the right opportunities earlier on, even though they are just as meritorious as men (Fact 1), and comprise much more than 10% of the population. A measure like seat reservation may help to reduce one of the systemic barriers (Fact 2), which is a history and culture of low representation of women in the IITs, which is discouraging and intimidating, and the unfortunate notion that the IITs are largely boys’ clubs, which I can definitely attest to.

Furthermore, the IITs have never been coveted only as a breeding ground for the country’s scientists. They have been so highly sought after because they represent the aspirations of so many in the country for economic and vocational security. The graduates who do go on to become scientists and researchers are in a minority; most other graduates end up working in areas that require essentially no domain-specific knowledge relating to what they majored in. Now it’s a separate discussion as to whether that is desirable or not, but given that that’s true, this potential gateway to more progress and prosperity has to be more accessible across demographics, especially for those that have been historically disadvantaged and deprived of that progress. If that happens at the cost of a pure meritocracy in which the notion of merit is not even universal or sacrosanct to begin with, then that is a fair outcome.

Now, is it true that putting this measure in place will give an advantage to women who are not discouraged from pursuing STEM careers in any way whatsoever, and are given sufficient resources to do so? Of course it’s true! Of course there are such women who are relatively more privileged than others. But, think about that for a second. If you acknowledge that, then you acknowledge that there is such a thing called privilege that also plays a role in such processes, beyond just merit in answering JEE questions. Additionally, by Fact 2 it is true that only a few women have this relative privilege. This measure is trying to account for that imbalance so that in future it is less of a privilege and more of a right that women get the same amount of support and encouragement for STEM careers as men. If in the process, a few women get an easier path to the IITs, then that is no more unfair than for boys from well-off families who have access to the best schools and teachers and resources as well as the social privilege of being male. I believe that is a small price to pay for an overall benefit.

Affirmative action is about equality of opportunities, not equality of outcomes. We need better educational facilities and opportunities from the grassroots level for women to truly equalize the playing field. Reserving seats for women in higher educational institutes does not help in this regard.

An important thing to consider here is that opportunities and outcomes are like moving finish lines. For instance, the outcome of being admitted to a resourceful school is then an opportunity to do well and then achieve the outcome of being admitted to a premier institute, which in turn is an opportunity. To avoid a never-ending chain, perhaps we can treat the outcome of having a productive career in a STEM job as a final outcome. By that standard, getting into college still represents an opportunity, and since much fewer women are getting that opportunity, even though they are no less capable (Fact 1), then this act of affirmative action could just as well be viewed as equalizing opportunity rather than outcomes. Also, note that affirmative action is the basis behind a lot of other moves that perhaps many more Indians would be in favour of, such as having Britain pay reparations for centuries of oppression, providing more government resources to poorer families, and the like. It just so happens that for an entrance exam based on objective results, seat reservation is the only means to have any kind of affirmative action. But I think the nature of this affirmative action makes it more unpalatable to people, which I can understand.

Regarding the issue of more grassroots educational programs for women, I think there has been a reasonable emphasis on this from the government’s side in the recent past. At least I observed as much as a volunteer for the National Service Scheme during my IIT years. Clearly, however, this has not been reflected at the higher education level. Certainly, part of that is because more needs to be done at the grassroots level to get girls to attend schools across the country — nobody seriously disputes that. More will always need to be done in this regard because we will always have a history of oppression of women and resistance to their upliftment to contend with. But continuously harping on this requirement being a bottleneck before any other measure can be implemented, distracts from the truth about why this has not been working.

I’ve seen myself, and I’m sure there are, several cases of girls in rural areas whose parents are okay or at least coaxed into sending them to primary schools, perhaps because of meal programs and other incentives, but are skeptical and reluctant for them to go any further. Even if in some cases they make it to college, for many of them, as soon as they graduate, the spectre of matrimony and homemaking rather than career aspirations hangs like a sword of Damocles over their heads — much more so than for most of their male counterparts. And even in cases where none of this is explicit, an atmosphere of discouragement and resentment makes it much more difficult for women to live up to their ability and potential. Along with education, perhaps the other way to reverse this cultural conditioning is for these families to see more and more women in the workforce, in technology and engineering, so that this becomes less of an exception and more of a norm. But with rates of women in the IITs (for instance) not significantly increasing over the last few years, that will not happen unless something breaks this cycle, which may well be one of the outcomes of this measure.

Reservation of seats for women is actually sexist — it sends the message that women are less capable than men in STEM fields and therefore need special provisions to help them. It lessens the validity of the achievements of women.

This objection used to be the most troubling for me back then because of its counter-intuitive nature. If women are just as capable as men, then why should they need any special arrangements?

Well, if anything I’ve said thus far has resonated with you, then you may already have pre-empted my answer, which is that this measure is not at all based on a belief that women are less capable than men (since Fact 1 refutes this), but rather it is based on the truth of Fact 2, which is, I repeat, that there are historical, cultural and systemic biases in India against women entering the STEM fields. Now, if it is the case that some members of the public believe otherwise, and this devalues the accomplishments of women in their eyes, then that is certainly unfortunate. However, that is a misconception we must try to address, rather than treat as a decisive factor for policy-making.

To future female STEM professionals who might be reading this, who feel that their achievements will be devalued in their own eyes if a quota for women is introduced, I wouldn’t presume to have any right or credibility to tell you how you should feel about yourself. What I can share are my own feelings. As an Indian male born in a well-to-do, supportive and highly educated family, I am pretty sure that the advantages and privileges I had for my education far outstrip that which any kind of seat reservation may provide for you. But I can live with that, because at the end of the day while those privileges may have been bestowed on me, I still have to do something with them. Maybe I didn’t have to work as hard as somebody who had fewer resources and support, but rather than feel guilty about that, I have tried to make the most of my good fortune because not everybody is so fortunate, and help others where I can. My hope is that you would do the same.

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