Gender Diversity A Far Cry

IN A COUNTRY that has produced a legion of successful male business leaders, from N.R. Narayana Murthy to Mukesh Ambani, the number of key female business leaders remain abysmally low, a reflection of the glaring gender disparity in business education, despite the global push for diversity and inclusion. Are institutions truly reflective of India’s demographic diversity, or is it a case of ‘diversity on paper?

A closer look at the gender composition of premier Indian business schools reveals a story of a slow but incremental change. According to data from the Ministry of Education, the gender ratio in India’s top 10 business schools has improved over the last decade, but men still overwhelmingly outnumber women. For instance, the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have reported a gradual rise in female enrollment. IIM Ahmedabad’s Class of 2024 saw female representation at around 25%, against 14% in 2014. But benchmarked against global business schools such as Wharton (50%) or Harvard (45%), there’s still a long way to go.

Progress & Pitfalls

While IIMs, including IIM Bangalore, IIM Calcutta and IIM Kozhikode boast of a more diverse student body than they did a decade ago, the progress has not been uniform. IIM Bangalore has a female representation of around 40% in its postgraduate programme for the 2024-26 batch, up from 21% five years ago, the highest women participation in the programme in last 18 years. Rishikesha T. Krishnan, director, IIM Bangalore recalls when he first joined the institution as a faculty 28 years ago, female students comprised only 15-17% of the class.

Meanwhile, IIM Calcutta reported 32% female students in its 2024 batch, an increase from 17% in 2013. IIM Kozhikode touched a high of 54% women intake in the PGP batch of 2013-2015, from less than 10% earlier.

Experts say efforts by these institutions to encourage more women applicants, including initiatives such as waivers on application fees, women-only scholarships, and gender diversity points in the admission process, have helped move the needle.

“We don’t directly empower them (women) to come here. Most institutions have 30-40% diversity by giving them (female students) five extra marks,” says Bharat Bhasker, director, IIM Ahmedabad. “We say you come by merit and we will not let you be treated with any compromise.” A decade ago, women made up just 3-4% of the student intake at IIM Ahmedabad. Today, the number has climbed to nearly 25%.

Pratham Mittal, founder of Gurugram-based Masters’ Union School of Business and Tetr College of Business, believes women participation will increase organically. “We don’t do affirmative action. If female students are scoring less, we don’t give them grace marks. And still, organically, at Masters Union, the share of women has increased, from 25% to 40%.” Tetr, meanwhile, has 36% female students in the first year of operation itself. Cherry on top: Masters Union director, PGP TBM (course), is a woman, Mahak Garg.

However, numbers tell only half the story. For every IIM and management school making strides towards gender parity, there is one lagging as well. The growth, therefore, is in moderation. The percentage of women enrolled in the top 25 B-Schools has remained range-bound between 30-35% for the last five years.

XLRI Jamshedpur, one of India’s oldest business schools, reports an average female enrollment of 30-35%. Albeit, the overall XAT 2023 cut-off for male students for the BM programme is 95 percentile, whereas for female students it’s 93 percentile. Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) Delhi has struggled to move beyond a 25% female intake for its MBA programme. All these raise questions about whether the problem lies in the pipeline of women applying, or systemic biases that continue to exist in the admission process.

Faculty Factor

While much focus is placed on gender diversity among students, the diversity — or lack of it — among faculty members in B-schools also deserves attention. Data from the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2023 reveals women constitute less than 25% of the faculty in India’s premier business schools such as the IIMs, XLRI Jamshedpur, and Indian School of Business (ISB). The gap widens further at the senior level, with few women in administrative roles such as deans or directors.

Sample this! Neelu Rohmetra, former director of IIM Sirmaur (Himachal Pradesh), became the first ever woman to head any IIM in 2017, when the oldest IIM was established more than 60 years ago.

According to the Financial Times Business School Rankings 2024, gender disparity among faculty at Indian B-schools is evidently striking. XLRI Jamshedpur trails the global pack with just 11% female faculty, the lowest among the 100 schools listed. The other five Indian institutions on the list show only marginally better figures: ISB has 17%, IIM Lucknow stands at 20%, and both IIM Bangalore and IIM Ahmedabad at 22%. IIM Calcutta offers a somewhat brighter picture with 29%, but the overall numbers highlight a persistent gender imbalance in the academic leadership of these institutions.

“This is certainly a bit on the lower side and we would like to increase this over time,” says Krishnan, referring to the female faculty at IIM Bangalore. “We have been making efforts in the last few years. The last couple of hires in the faculty have been women, but there’s still some way to go.”

With more women coming into the PhD programme, it will create a larger pool of candidates, says Krishnan. More than 50% of PhD programme participants at IIM Bangalore this year are women.

Beyond Admissions

While B-schools are gradually becoming more diverse in gender terms, the experience of women once they enter these hallowed institutions is another story altogether. “When my college decided to award points for gender diversity, it led to a batch that was nearly 70% female,” says Richa Singh, a recent graduate of MDI Gurgaon. “This sparked a different type of conversation — mostly among men — who argued that women had it easy and lacked merit.” She explains how this frustration was largely due to more women landing placement offers, which was bound to happen in a batch with a higher number of female students.

Yet, Singh acknowledges “these talks definitely had, no matter how little, some merit”. That’s because companies, aware of the gender ratios, were often driven by their diversity hiring mandates.

“We have seen a significant shift in recent years wherein companies pledge to be diverse organisations, and then the recruitment team ensures the numbers reflect that commitment,” shares S. Pasupathi, COO of HirePro, an AI-powered recruitment and automation firm, adding, “The business side may dictate the numbers, but the recruitment team decides how to achieve diversity goals.” In fact, campus hiring has become a key strategy, he says, for achieving diversity goals in recent years.

Curiously, despite Singh’s batch being overwhelmingly female, the top student leadership positions — general secretary, academic secretary, and treasurer — were all held by men. “Whether this stemmed from an inherent bias towards seeing men as natural leaders, or whether it was just a coincidence, we couldn’t quite pin down,” adds Singh. The irony isn’t lost — women are often celebrated in numbers but hit a different kind of glass ceiling when it comes to key roles.

Where India Inc. Fits In

Indian business schools do not exist in a vacuum; they are closely linked to the corporate world, which ultimately absorbs their graduates. The lack of gender diversity in B-Schools is mirrored in boardrooms. The reality is that women in top leadership roles are still a rare sight. According to a recent study by Fortune India and SPJIMR, only 1.6% of Fortune 500 companies in India are led by women MDs or CEOs. Even among The Next 500, a list of emerging companies, the figure only creeps up to 5%. Across the broader landscape of the Fortune 1000 India, it’s a mere 3.2%. For a country where women constitute nearly half of the 1.4 billion population, the numbers are startling.

The scarcity of women at the helm isn’t just a corporate issue; it starts much earlier, with the low representation of women in business schools and executive training programmes. This imbalance, experts argue, points to deep-rooted systemic barriers that subsequently limit women’s rise to leadership roles.

While some B-schools have introduced gender-specific scholarships, programmes and diversity scores as part of their admission criteria, such interventions have not always yielded desired outcomes. For instance, ISB and IIM Ranchi stand out for achieving relatively balanced gender ratios, with 40% and 41.56% women, respectively, in their 2024 cohorts, and have been hailed as success stories. Yet, critics argue that such measures, while well-intentioned, may sometimes result in a tokenistic approach rather than a structural change.

The risk is diversity may become a checkbox exercise rather than a meaningful change in culture. IIM Rohtak drew attention on social media a few months ago for giving nearly 95% of its 453 seats in the General Category to women candidates. It sparked a debate online, with critics arguing that merit was sidelined in favour of gender bias in the admissions process.

“Today, every organisation is advancing diversity as a goal, ensuring their DEI mandates are met. This means when companies announce their hiring numbers, they always include the percentage of female employees and other diverse candidates. In the past, this may not have been a priority, but now most firms aim for a 30-50% hiring mandate of female candidates,” says Pasupathi.

Bhasker, however, opines that at IIM Ahmedabad, companies start engaging with students from Day One, and there’s no apparent emphasis on proactive diversity hiring during campus recruitment.