Business schools still don’t measure up on gender scale

Female enrollment in the three most sought-after, older IIMs—Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta—has been modest, with about 30–50 female students for every 100 male students. Other top B-schools have also not shown any significant improvement in the last five years.

It’s not because of willingness to try. B-schools are implementing scholarship programs, allocating additional marks to women candidates at the time of admission, and creating women leadership communities and mentorship programs, among other things.

But even in leading B-schools, students’ security in the city, need for more career paths are determining factors that impact gender diversity on campus.

Women’s participation in the Common Admission Test (CAT), the entrance exam for most B-schools, stood at only around 35-36% of the total candidates who took the exam between 2019 and 2023.

peppermint The class profile was analyzed from batch 2017-19 to 2022-24 for two-year postgraduate programs in some of the top B-schools. In the case of Indian School of Business (ISB), we considered its one-year management programme.

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The analysis revealed that IIM-Ahmedabad continues to struggle with low gender diversity among students, reaching 28 women for every 100 men in the 2020-22 batch. Similarly, IIM-Bangalore and IIM-Calcutta saw the lowest enrollment of female students in the 2018-20 batch, comprising only 30% of the total batch.

An exception was IIM-Kozhikode, but only in one batch (2020-22), when women outnumbered men.

“In 2012, we adopted a policy of greater gender and other forms of diversity at IIMK,” said Debashish Chatterjee, director of IIM-Kozhikode. “Earlier, the average intake of women into premier programs at IIMs was 8-10%. Diversity targets in both gender and academic terms were achieved through the introduction of consistency in academic performance, including Class 10 and 12 results.

Meanwhile, management colleges are taking steps to increase their gender scores to improve global rankings.

IIM-Indore director Himanshu Rai told peppermint There are additional points for female candidates applying for the two-year course and those with non-engineering background.

Interestingly, the location of the B-school within the campus and student safety is a major parameter in the choice of college for female candidates. Both IIM-Indore and IIM-Bangalore have highlighted how a city’s location and its security play an important role.

IIM Bangalore has student clubs such as Women in Management; Runs executive education programs like Tanmatra for women leaders; Has pioneered women entrepreneurship programs; There are a significant number of female faculty members and women on the board.

B-schools are also pushing for more committees focused on women. The stress on diversity comes at a time when India Inc. has left a large number of women during the pandemic years and is now trying to bring them back.

Ramabhadran Thirumalai, deputy dean of academic programs at ISB, said the institute is offering the scholarship to encourage more women candidates. “There is also a push-pull relationship between companies and colleges. In some cases, companies have requests for female candidates, and this adds to the attraction factor,” Dean said.

A senior official at one of the top B-schools said some companies demand more women candidates. “Recruiters say they only want to recruit women this year and have special leadership programs for them,” he said, requesting anonymity.

The gender ratio in some of the top B-schools in developed economies is higher than in Indian B-schools, but female enrollment has remained at 35-45% in the last two years.