Girls and girls characterize half the inhabitants of the world but their participation in scientific research is lagging. In many nations, this disparate contribution begins as early as faculty. In the U.S., for instance, ladies are much less prone to take superior calculus, physics, arithmetic, and biology at highschool stage.
In many different nations, the quantity of ladies opting to main in a science, expertise, engineering or arithmetic (STEM) topic is considerably decrease than that of boys. Women represent solely 35% of STEM graduates throughout the world and earn solely 40% of STEM PhDs. Further, primarily based on information from 146 nations, girls scientists comprise solely 30% of the STEM workforce, which incorporates educational jobs and college positions. This systematic loss of girls at varied levels of STEM training and careers is generally referred to as the ‘leaky pipeline’.
And at first look, India seems to be an exception.
Where are the ‘leaks’?
At the faculty stage, practically all college students have ‘science’ as a compulsory topic and (not less than anecdotally) ladies take part in science quizzes, Olympiads, summer time colleges, hackathons, and hands-on tinkering challenges. After class X, the enrolment of ladies in the ‘science’ stream will be as excessive as 60%, with ladies making up 46% of all class XII science pass-outs. In 2025 the Ministry of Education reported that for the first time in over a decade, extra ladies had cleared their Class XII examination in science than in the arts stream. This indicated a major enhance in the participation of ladies in science training: in keeping with information from 2014, 7.5 lakh extra ladies graduated from the arts stream than science. As a outcome, India boasts of the highest share of feminine STEM graduates worldwide, with 43% girls science graduates at the bachelor’s stage and practically 50% at the masters and doctoral ranges.
But past the encouraging statistics, India does have a leaky pipeline for ladies in STEM — besides that it seems totally different from the rest of the world.
In spite of producing the highest quantity of feminine STEM graduates, girls represent only 18% of the research and growth workforce in the nation. A Department of Science and Technology report reveals that girls constituted lower than 30% of scientists in India’s nationwide research businesses; the highest illustration was in the Indian Council of Medical Research at 29% and the lowest in the Defence Research and Development Organisation at 14%. Women additionally make up solely 8% of college at the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore and 11-13% of scientists at the IITs. While university settings, each authorities and personal, report greater illustration, the figures are nonetheless decrease than 30%.
The typical Indian milieu
What this implies is that whereas girls in India enter STEM training in giant numbers, they’re under-represented in scientific research jobs. This ‘leaky pipeline’ persists attributable to a mix of social, structural, and systemic challenges.
In colleges, ladies in India are sometimes inspired to pursue science and people in science are thought-about to be ‘good’ or ‘smart’ ladies, with ‘wanting to become a scientist’ regarded upon favourably by academics, friends, and oldsters. Yet as girls advance in their science training — the pursuit of which may require a number of years of coaching and dedication — social expectations pose obstacles to their profession plans. Completing a PhD typically coincides with the seek for a research job in addition tofamilial directives to ‘settle down’, bear youngsters, and ‘focus’ on the family. In India’s typical socio-cultural milieu, girls typically relocate to their husband’s place of residing, regulate to a brand new household construction, and deal with the bigger share of childcare and family tasks, all of which pose vital challenges to in search of profitable scientific research jobs and positions.
Scientific recruitment throughout authorities research organisations have strict age cut-offs, particularly at entry-level positions, in addition to erratic hiring practices, a dearth of positions, and particular mandates for sure fields of research. For girls, given geographic constraints and familial tasks, accessing these long-term jobs means doing so inside the age eligibility and in an outlined location, components that outcome in a restricted pool of choices. Academic jobs additionally don’t permit for distant work; whereas sure roles might permit for versatile and hybrid work fashions, they usually don’t immediately contain research or educating.
Position hole
At the stage of the research ecosystem, some of these social and structural challenges are being addressed through particular recruitment drives and funding schemes for ladies scientists. In spite of these measures, establishments lag in making certain gender parity at the time of recruitment, and gender equity initiatives have both been restricted to pilot projects, will not be appropriately incentivised, or are related to minimal accountability.
Consequently, the majority of girls PhD holders in STEM in India discover themselves unable to entry long-term, profitable and prestigious research jobs. This outcomes in a place hole, the place girls scientists typically must take care of short-term, contractual, precarious, and unstable positions, akin to these discovered in quasi-academic initiatives, entities funded on grants, fellowships, or ‘soft money’, positions with out full-spectrum advantages, promotions or increments, and roles with restricted profession development.
The large ‘leak’ in India’s STEM pipeline, as seen by the sharp loss of girls scientists throughout the transition from science training to the research workforce, is a consequence of social, structural, and systemic challenges — and is mirrored in the place hole that precludes the majority of skilled girls scientists from long-term and sustained participation in scientific research.
Karishma S Kaushik is a physician-scientist and scientific marketing consultant. She has not too long ago printed a e book for women and girls in search of to pursue STEM training and careers.
Published – March 08, 2026 08:00 am IST