Home Newsroom The MBA batch of 2021-23 see 11% decline in female students at six older IIMs

The MBA batch of 2021-23 see 11% decline in female students at six older IIMs

D2C Admin

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The MBA batch of 2021-23 see 11% decline in female students at six older IIMs

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The MBA class of 2021-23 saw a big dip of 11% in the number of female students who were admitted to the flagship PGP program. These older IIMs are that of Calcutta, Kozhikode, Indore, Lucknow, Bangalore, and Ahmedabad. From 1028 female students in the 2020-22 batch, the number declined to 917. These six older IIMs collectively attributed to the 11% decline, the reason being the less number of women students taking the Common Admission Test (CAT) 2020 and the sudden rush among the newer IIMs to enhance their levels of gender diversity, which resulted in more takers for a smaller pool.

It was only IIM Ahmedabad that registered a 28% rise in the numbers of female candidates who were admitted into the PGP flagship program - from 85 to 109 in a year.

Let the numbers do the talking

In the last twelve months, women students who represented 36% of the total population in the six IIMs represent only 31.8% in the newest batch of 2021 in these B-Schools. In the same breath, the corresponding numbers for 2019-21 and 2018-20 had been 33.5% and 26% respectively.

IIM Ahmedabad is known for its discussion-based learning environment which ensures that gender diversity remains an integral part of bringing an instrumental and positive change all around. The numbers have been intact at IIM Bangalore and IIM Lucknow. At IIM Bangalore, there are 144 females, in comparison with 145 in the last batch. IIM Lucknow has 165 female students in comparison with 171 in the 2018-2020 batch.

Himanshu Rai, the director of IIM Indore said that the possible reason for the drop of female candidates could be attributed to lesser female students taking the CAT 2020 exam. As a matter of fact, about 75,004 female students took CAT 2019 as compared to 66,755 in CAT 2020. It points to the fact that there were few women students, to begin with.

He stated IIM Indore provides additional marks to women candidates for their CAT scores and had no change in their selection process this year. But female students in the brand new batch at the institute have fallen to 163 (or 33% of the batch) from 199 (40%) in the last batch.

At IIM Kozhikode, the number of female students fell to 187 (39%) from 256 (52%) in the batch of 2018-2020 whereas IIM Calcutta saw the drop to 149 ((31%) from 171 (36%).

Name of the IIM	Number of female students in 2020	Number of female students in 2021
IIM Calcutta	171	149
IIM Kozhikode	256	187
IIM Indore	199	163
IIM Ahmedabad	85	109

New and baby IIMs on gender inclusivity and gender variety

Gender variety is an important aspect of ranking various institutes, especially B-Schools. This feature has also been executed by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (launched in 2015) that thinks about gender variety as vital. The female applicants’ pool size is increasing exponentially and the demand for women candidates has also grown in greater proportion, if not the same. Newer IIMs are leaving no stone unturned in attracting female applicants; some even decreasing their CAT cut-offs.

For instance, IIM Sambalpur is not only giving a 5% discount in CAT percentiles of women candidates but is also calling for private interviews. Subsequently, it has 48% female students in its 165-strong batch. It seems that all other new, baby IIMs are also following this approach which is in fact, a more gender-inclusive admission policy.

Campus recruiters are also constantly on the lookout for gender variety. Rajkamal Vempati, the HR head at Axis bank shares that they need a healthy representation of women on campuses for a healthy pipeline, which will ultimately give them more women leaders. Axis Bank hires a large pool of women students off-campus and even intends to maximize these numbers.

Narayanan Ramaswamy, sector head, schooling, and ability improvement, at KPMG India, said that more intense and rigorous measures have to be taken for gender diversity. Do we have to ask if we have courses that attract more women from different backgrounds? Or, have lower cutoffs for girls from rural India? Only then can we think that we are treading on the right path, i.e., towards a gender-inclusive environment.

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