CHENNAI: In colleges and universities in the state, women now outnumber men, dominate PhD research, and fill most entry-level teaching posts, yet in the rank of professor, their lead disappears.
Tamil Nadu has 2,18,656 teachers, the highest in any state and 12.6% of the country’s entire faculty strength, according to the latest All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2023-24 report. Of them, 1,15,206 are women against 1,03,450 men, a ratio of 111 women for every 100 men. This comes at a time when men still outnumber women in higher education teaching nationally.
The edge is distinct at the entry level where 84,783 women work as lecturers and assistant professors compared to 71,165 men, while among demonstrators and tutors, women (7,863) outnumber men (3,152) by more than two to one.
Even in temporary and ad hoc positions, women hold a slight edge, at 4,532 against 3,621 men. One rung higher, however, the numbers turn. Men outnumber women – 13,151 to 10,838 – at the associate professor level, and the gap only widens from there- Tamil Nadu has 12,039 male professors against just 6,993 women, meaning women hold only about 36.7% of professorial posts despite making up the majority of the teaching workforce.
Making the imbalance harder to explain is the state’s pipeline of women researchers which shows no sign of drying up.
AISHE data put 27,274 women in ongoing PhD programmes against 21,211 men, and in the most recent academic year, 1,524 women completed their doctorates compared to 1,255 men. Tamil Nadu, in other words, is training more women researchers than ever but it may not be promoting them at the same rate.
Rita John, registrar of the University of Madras and a professor in the Department of Theoretical Physics, traces the gap to the career breaks women take after childbirth, which she said tend to blunt their research momentum just as their male peers are pushing ahead.
“Because of these breaks, they often struggle to match the research output and journal publications of their male counterparts,” she said. “Every woman aspiring to reach the top of her profession faces her own share of resistance. Overcoming those barriers requires resilience and passion.” She added the number of women entering higher education has improved in recent years, and that the effects of that shift should become visible over time.
K Raja, secretary of the Association of University Teachers, said, “Many women keep their professional aspirations aside because of family responsibilities and become more complacent,” he said.
Academics point to a particularly awkward overlap: the transition from associate professor to professor tends to fall exactly in the years when many women are carrying the heaviest caregiving load, compounded by slow faculty recruitment, thin representation in administrative roles, and fewer chances to build a research portfolio while on a break.
The scene elsewhere
Only Tamil Nadu and Kerala, among other Indian states, currently have more women than men in higher education teaching sector, whereas in states like Uttar Pradesh, men still outnumber women from entry-level posts to that of professor and other senior faculty member positions