With nearly 1,200 girls enrolling in tech this year, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Hyderabad zone has the best gender ratio of any IIT campus. While the average percentage of female IIT students is 19 per cent, the southern zone has 26 per cent, of young women.
Girls' enrollment in the respective Institute is nearly half of the total aspirants due to their early registration with many securing seats.
Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Puducherry are all part of this zone. Five years after the IITs implemented the supernumerary female quota, almost every campus has an average of 19.7 per cent females.
There are 3,411 girls in the most recent batch of 2023, three times more than 955 in 2017, the year before supernumerary seats were created for women. And one-third of those are in the IIT Hyderabad zone.
The quota for women reserved seats was 14 per cent in 2018, increasing to 17 per cent the following year and 20 per cent thereafter.
IIT Delhi intends to achieve a gender ratio of 50:50 on its campus. Rangan Banerjee, IIT Delhi director stated that women are excelling academically, with a diverse mix of programs like design and public policy contributing to the richness of the educational experience. She continued that, IIT Delhi aims to change the mindset towards science and engineering, ensuring gender reflects India's population numbers, and transforming gender into a non issue.
