In the mid-2000s, only eight women were enrolled for a Bachelors of Technology (BTech) course at an IIT for every 100 men. This was in stark contrast to other engineering colleges in the country, where 30 women enrolled for every 100 men, or the general science courses, where nearly equal numbers of men and women were enrolling. In 2016, the Joint Admission Board — the body responsible for administering the entrance exams to IITs — constituted a committee under the chairmanship of Timothy Gonsalves. The committee was tasked with looking into the reasons behind the meagre number of women in the BTech courses in IITs—which are largely accepted as the most prestigious spaces to study engineering in the country—and recommending measures to increase their intake.
The committee identified three possible causes behind the lower enrollment of women.
One: the reluctance of families to spend on daughters’ education limited their access to coaching centres, often deemed pivotal to pass the qualifying Joint Engineering Entrance (JEE) exam.
Two: the absence of female students in IITs over the preceding decades had produced very few female ‘role-models,’ resulting in a dearth of inspiration for young women.
Three: they found that even if women did secure admission into an IIT, many families were not allowing them to enroll in branches perceived as ‘masculine’ (such as mechanical or civil) and remained generally concerned about their safety on campus.
Familial discouragement and disinterest were preventing women from walking the corridors of IITs, concluded the committee. Noting the need for a push from within the system, they recommended the introduction of supernumerary seats across all IITs. These would be in addition to the existing seats and reserved for female students alone. The IIT Council approved the proposal in 2018 — the year when the first batch of female students entered an IIT through the Supernumerary Seat Scheme (SSS).
Seven years since its commencement, the impact of the SSS remains both understudied and misunderstood, a gap this explainer attempts to fill. Using the findings of researchers at STEMtheGap project at IIT Delhi, who have thoroughly analysed the working of the SSS and the experiences of women in an IIT campus in its wake, we answer some frequently asked questions around SSS, and examine its effects.
How does the scheme work?
The term ‘supernumerary’ refers to the fact that extra seats earmarked for women were added to the existing pool (and not carved out from the existing set as is done for other quotas). During the SSS’s inception in 2017, the policymakers were aware of the need for differing levels of push across engineering branches — for example, mechanical and civil engineering had historically comprised fewer female students than textile or chemical. The exact number of seats added to the existing pool then depended on the difference between the desired female enrollment and the existing female students in a branch in 2017. The SSS set itself a target of 14% female enrolment across all branches in 2018, 17% in 2019, and 20% from 2020 onwards—and added seats in accordance.
How are the supernumerary seats filled?
Following the SSS, every branch at an IIT consisted of two types of seats with respect to gender: gender-neutral, and supernumerary (for women only). Women who fill a branch as their first preference during the admission process are allotted — in the increasing order of their ranks — a supernumerary seat in the branch. This continues until all the supernumerary seats of a branch are filled. Only if still more women are eligible to be admitted to the branch, are they placed in a gender-neutral seat.
This order of filling is meant to ensure that the odds of a male student finding a seat in a branch remain unaffected. For women, the scheme makes it possible to get admitted into older, higher-ranked IITs, or to a more popular and desirable branch — either of which may not have been allotted to them on the basis of a common JEE rank. In doing so, the scheme accounts for the social factors that produce a student’s rank in a competitive examination.
A depiction of the typical JEE Advanced rank list. This is from a 2024 advertisement by a popular coaching institute.
Does the SSS help improve gender representation across engineering branches?
Yes, the extra seats were added in all the branches, until the percent of women therein reached 20. This evenness prevented the clustering of women in one or two ‘lower-ranked’ branches (on the basis of popular perception), as had been the case earlier.
Does the SSS take caste into account?
Within the supernumerary seats, the allotment follows the caste-based reservation policy, preventing a concentration of upper caste women alone.
Has the SSS been successful?
The SSS has successfully shot up the proportion of female students in IITs in the past seven years. Research from the STEMTheGap project shows that barring IIT Kharagpur, all IITs now comprise 20 percent female students in their engineering programs. For IIT Kharagpur, concerns related to its location seem to have prevented the ratio from reaching the set limit. The IITs located in the southern part of the country have a slightly higher percent than the rest.
SSS has been pivotal in increasing the number of women in circuital and historically masculine branches such as mechanical, civil, and computer science. This is also seen in the older IITs (Delhi, Bombay, Roorkee, Guwahati, Madras, Kanpur), which suffered the worst ratios in the past.
Given the seats are distributed as per the caste-based reservation policy, the scheme has increased the number of women from disadvantaged caste groups in IITs—ensuring the new-found diversity is intersectional and wide-ranging.
Finally, qualitative study done by STEMTheGap shows that parents are now encouraging daughters to attempt the JEE, since they have a “better chance” of getting in.
Has the SSS altered the social lives of women on an IIT campus?
The changes brought forth by the SSS are visible and palpable. One of the authors of this piece, Abhilasha, who graduated from IIT Delhi in 2012 says that the campus “looks different”: one doesn’t have to make too much of an effort to spot a woman on campus. They are more visible–in the classrooms, in the corridors, and in the common areas.
Megha*, a student pursuing BTech. in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, told STEMTheGap that the campus has also begun to “feel different”. “…I feel [the SSS] has done wonders at making me feel somewhat at home. When I see other girls in this department, I have that sense of relatability that there’s someone like me who’s here.”
How is the academic performance of “post-SSS women students”?
Even if women who enroll in an IIT through the means of supernumerary SSS were placed below their male peers in the JEE rank list, STEMTheGap has found that they catch-up by the time of graduation. This means that women entering the IITs after the introduction of the SSS graduate with GPAs at par with men. Furthermore, women who avail the SSS have a higher chance of graduating with a B.Tech degree. The research also concludes that these women complete an average of six additional credits to complete their degree, and they do so without delaying their graduation timelines.
Results of a study from IGES in IIT Delhi showing that even girls with somewhat lower JEE ranks, once at IIT, are very likely to perform at least as well as male classmates, if not better. Source: IGES website
How has the institute community received the SSS?
Despite the SSS’s successes, there are still many challenges in ensuring that women who join these institutions feel included. The first one is that women are — wrongly — called ‘seat stealers’. This belief is misguided because, as underlined above, the odds of a man finding a seat in the branch of their choice were the same before and after SSS. Male peers also find women who’re beneficiaries of SSS to be undeserving of the branch they’re enrolled in, calling it an ‘unfair quota’.
Dishaa*, who benefitted from the scheme, explained the inaccuracy behind this belief. “We are not taking their seats. These seats weren’t there before. So, for women, they’re giving an extra portion, and that’s all! I’m the first person in my family to go to an IIT. My father studied in a good, private college. He said he could not have dreamt of IIT because it was such a difficult feat. So this push (supernumerary) really gave me (motivation).”
The infrastructure in the IITs is also struggling to keep pace with the major increase in enrolment. Despite ongoing efforts, the hostels and the common spaces at IITD remain inadequate to accommodate the increased number of students.
Lastly, the peer mentorship available to women availing SSS is limited, owing to the fact that prior batches had far fewer women, and the IITs have had historically limited cross-gender interactions owing to the segregated nature of the living spaces.
What happens now, that most IITs have hit 20%?
SSS is a milestone in making elite Indian STEM institutions more hospitable for women STEM students, however, it is important to ensure that the momentum continues beyond the 20% enrolment. There has to be sustained efforts towards inclusion of women. This necessitates the creation of adequate and gender-responsive infrastructure. Also required, is a sensitisation of the campus community to the workings of the scheme, in order to allay the misconceptions people hold.
*Names changed to protect anonymity.
Note: This report is based on research conducted by Gayatri Balu (IIT Delhi), Ananya Redkar (IIT Delhi), Nandana Sengupta (IIT Delhi), Ravinder Kaur (IIT Delhi), and Rohit Munshi (University of Houston). It is part of ‘HumanIITies’, a special series co-produced by the STEMTheGap team at IIT Delhi and LabHopping Science Media Forum to highlight perspectives from the humanities at STEM institutes. Any opinions expressed in the article are those of the author(s)’ alone.
The featured image was prepared by Nandita Jayaraj using Canva and photographs provided by Raunaq Saraswat.
