With an increase in the number of girl students appearing for the Common Admission Test (CAT), it is not surprising that more women are enrolling at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) this academic year.
The Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry has reported that on the whole, about 1,619 girls have been admitted this academic year as compared to about 1,349 in the previous year. The IIMs admitted 25.69 per cent women students in 2017, 26.85 per cent in 2018 and 30.61 per cent in 2019. About 114 girls enrolled for the MBA programme in the 2017-19 batch at IIM Bangalore, which is the oldest of the IIMs. The figure has increased to 165 in the current batch.
Among the newer IIMs, IIM-Rohtak has witnessed the maximum increase from six per cent girl students in 2016 (9 girls) to 50 per cent of the batch in 2018 and 2019. There were 119 girl students in 2018 and 124 in 2019!
Apparently, of the 2.41 lakh students who took the CAT in 2018, more than 84,000 were girls. In the previous year, only about 78,000 girls had appeared.
What is even better is that a girl student bagged the highest summer internship offer in the 2018-20 batch, at IIM-Nagpur.
Gender balance has improved because many companies are hiring women under their diversity hiring programmes. Also, organisations are more open to hiring women for leadership roles today. In addition, all IIMs have been focussing on increasing the number of girl students. IIM-Nagpur, for instance, has introduced a diversity score in the shortlisting process because girls are found to perform better at this level. The weightage to diversity was hiked from five per cent to 10 per cent.
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