CHENNAI: While the poor gender ratio, may not be a direct indicator of misogyny in these premier institutions, it is still a reminder that top scientific institutions in the country are far from conducive incubation grounds for women.
V Geetha a feminist scholar, said the western stereotype that women are inferior to men at mathematics and sciences, does not work in India and the rest of South Asia as women generally perform well in these subjects. “While I do not know if these institutions are lonely places for women, the question I have is, are these places welcoming to female students?” she said.
The families which send female students to such institutions have a lot of expectations from their wards. Considering there are fewer women as compared to men, they feel more pressure to perform better in order to not be seen as a weaker sex, she said.
“These women find it particularly harder as they are already among a group of highly competitive individuals and are pushed to outdo their male peers even in their small collective numbers,” she said pointing out the stress on female students.
A senior engineering faculty member from IIT-Madras said it “is unfortunate but true” that women are still the primary care-takers at home and therefore female faculty members end up spending more time on household affairs than their male-counterparts, who have that time to focus on academics and student-interaction. She, however, said the recruitment procedure at IIT- Madras was fair and did not deliberately rule out women for faculty positions.
The faculty argued that even as the gender ratio was poor, female students showed equivalent performance as male students on average. “Once female students make it into the system, their participation in most activities are on a par with male students,” she asserted ruling out the culture at the institution was to blame for the poor gender ratio.
Another younger female faculty from the institute, said one cannot however ignore that entry of female students into the system is bottle-necked by regressive patriarchy. “Most of the students who make it to IIT, have taken coaching classes.
“The number of parents who spend extra for a girl child’s career is really low. Further, many parents do not want to send their female children far away from them, so many female students do not even attempt writing the exam. So the ones who do make it into the system have to be extremely competitive,” she said.