The Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode (IIM) proposes to allocate 60 additional seats in its flagship 2-year Post-Graduate Program (PGP) exclusively for women from the next academic year.
IIM-K will become the first among the IIMs to introduce women-only seats in the wake of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) that created an additional 800 seats for women in 2018. The step follows a directive from the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry to improve the gender ratio in institutes of higher learning.
Interestingly, way back in 2013, IIM-K had set a record of having 54% women representation in the PGP cohort that has now dropped down to 28%. The situation is no better at the other IIMs. At IIM Indore, it is 39%.
Female students in the PGP program at IIM Bangalore was 28.26% for the Class of 2016 that dipped slightly to 28.15% for the Class of 2017.
At IIM-L, the percentage of women candidates for the batch women candidates for the batch of 2015-17 slipped to 32% for the 2015-17 batch, slipping from a high of 46% for the 2014-16
The Economic Times quotes IIM-K Director Prof Debashis Chatterjee saying that the Institute was looking for girls from creative fields like authors and captains of national teams to bring a multi-dimensional aspect to the class. While factoring in the CAT (common admission test) scores, the IIM plans to broaden the admission lens will be broader than the conventional ones.
Overall, female representation has been fluctuating at the IIMs. With the majority of the students from the engineering background, a male-dominant sector, women constituted a very small percentage. In the quest to increase diversity in the class, over the past few years, conscious efforts had been made to increase the gender diversity.
However, the results have been mixed. In fact, there were reports earlier this year of women intake in IIMs fell 4% in the past five years. Overall, for the PGP programs, from a high of 31.7% in the 2013-15 batch, it has come down to 27.5% in the 2017-19 batch.
While IIM Ahmedabad gives no specific weightage for gender diversity, the percentage of women reached a high of 35% in 2014-16 batch but dipped by almost half in the next year.
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IIM Bangalore which gives gender diversity weightage, women representation has been around 25%. IIM Calcutta, despite having weightage for gender diversity, saw women intake crash to 16.4% in 2016-18. However, it hit an all-time high of 30.9% in 2017-19.
At IIM-L, the percentage of women candidates for the batch women candidates for the batch of 2015-17 slipped to 32% for the 2015-17 batch, slipping from a high of 46% for the 2014-16. IIM-L had changed its admission policy for the 2012-14 admission giving a special weightage of two marks to women candidates.
IIM Indore had been maintaining 30% women intake except for the 2014-16 batch. It crossed 40% in the 2017-19 batch. The combined women intake in the six old IIMs was around 30% except in the 2015-17 and 2016-18 batches.
