Women outnumber men in higher education in K'taka, UP

Uttar Pradesh has closed ranks with Karnataka in making significant progress towards gender equity in classrooms with an enrollment of women in higher education surpassing that of men in the key Hindi-belt state for the first time, according to a government report released last week.

The enrollment figures of women students in Karnataka, which reached 50% in 2017-18 for the first time, has kept up
its pace for another consecutive year.

For the year 2018-19, the latest All India Survey of Higher Education (AISHE) has pegged the overall enrollment of women in higher education in Karnataka at 50.04%. Over 37.51 lakh students were estimated to have been enrolled to various programmes in the state.

Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka are the only two states where overall enrollment of women has slightly surpassed that of men in 2018-19, though the gap in gender parity in classrooms continues to exist at various levels of higher education in both the states.

“A relatively higher share of male enrollment than the female enrollment of students is also seen across the levels in most of the states. The ratio of male is higher than that of female in almost every level, except in MPhil, Post Graduate and Certificate programme,” the AISHE report noted.

Professional courses

According to the report, the participation of women in professional courses is lower in comparison to that in academic courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

“The gap is higher in enrollment in professional courses in private institutions...,” the AISHE report underlined.

Notwithstanding “a skewed distribution” of men and women enrollments, the country has made significant progress in narrowing the gap in participation of men and women in higher education. “There is an increase in gender parity index (GPI) for all the categories,” the report noted.

During the last five years, the GPI has increased from 0.92 in 2014-15 to 1 in 2018-19.

“For Scheduled Caste, the GPI has increased from 0.91 to 1.02. For Scheduled Tribes, it has increased from 0.81 to 0.92 during the period,” the report noted. The GPI has also increased “marginally” across all the states, it added.