A survey conducted by a leading management education training institute has showed that just one out of 10 women management aspirants make it to the IIMs.

The Bangalore-based Xavier Institute of Management and Entrepreneurship (XIME) has a good number of girl students. XIME Founder and President Prof J Philip said the girl student population in his institute ranged anywhere from 42% to 48%. Girls performed as well as the boys, even managing to bag the top five ranks, he said.IFIM-B is another institute with a good number of women students. “Forty per cent of our students are girls,” said Sanjay Padode, Secretary of the trust, who runs the IFIM-B.

Even many leading management education training institutes have seen an increase in enrolment of women candidates. At Career Forum, for instance, there was a five per cent annual increase in the enrolment of women candidates. Another institute, the IMS Learning Resource Private Limited, witnessed a 30 to 40 per cent increase in enrolment of women candidates from Karnataka, excluding Bangalore, during the last three years, according to Gopinath G, Head (Mysore, Mangalore, Manipal) IMS.

Sanjeev Paul, Study Coordinator, Career Forum, said the performance of women candidates had improved. “They may not have made it to IIMs but they have definitely made it to other top B-schools,” he said, adding that their participation in CAT was still low.

Depanjan Das, Associate Vice President (India and Middle East), Career Launcher, said one reason for the women candidates’ weak performance in CAT could be their non-engineering degree. “If we look at the CAT paper pattern of the last three years, two-third of the paper is more of Quantitative Analysis and Data Interpretation, one-third of the paper is in English. A candidate from engineering background will be strong in quantitative ability,” he explained.