Bringing the Missing Women Back

The problem of underrepresentation of women studying STEM subjects is well known and is being faced by several nations across the world. The field of computer science is no exception to this deteriorating gender ratio, nor is the Indian case. The male:female population ratio in India is 1.06, but the ratio of females making it to engineering institutions is lower, at 1.79.1 In absolute numbers, India produces around 1.5 million engineers from its 6,000 engineering institutions across the country.2 When it comes to employ-ability, 4.03% of male engineering students are employable by IT product firms, while only 2.54% of females are employable by these firms, and 16.67% of males as against 15.49% of females are employable by IT Services organizations. If we shift our focus to the employability of the graduates of top engineering institutions in the country--Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), National Institutes of Technology (NITs), and other leading engineering educational institutions including International Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs)--employability among fresh graduates in IT product roles increases to 22.67%, and in IT Services roles, it is 36.29%.1