STEM Careers in India Continue to Experience Gender Gap

With gender inequality persisting as a burning issue for centuries, the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) careers in India continue to be a victim of gender gap too. India’s advancement towards gender equality, as measured by its position in rankings such as the Gender Development Index has been quite upsetting. Though the gender wage gap is measurable in organized sectors like IT, healthcare, etc., the unorganized sector routinely underpays women as compared to their male counterparts.

According to a survey conducted by global technology and engineering company, Emerson, although around 84 per cent of Indians believe that STEM jobs are necessary for the development of the country in upcoming days, fewer people of Generation Z said that they had actually felt encouraged to pursue a STEM-based career, compared to a greater fraction of millennial people. A demand-supply gap for digitally skilled employees is clearly evident, as most of the industrial sectors are undergoing expeditious digital transformation- a major reason behind this is the exclusion of women from the technical field. Among the women who said that they were not encouraged to pursue careers in STEM, 41 per cent attributed this missed opportunity in workforce to stereotypes that STEM careers are for men, while another 44 per cent had to say it is due to the lack of female role models in the field of STEM.

The Head of Office of Science and Innovation in the Sweden Embassy, Fanny von Heland said in an interview with BusinessLine, “The STEM field is so perpetuated with gender stereotypes. It has a very strong male-dominated culture. There is a lack of role models for girls and women.” On 7th December, the Swedish Embassy organized a virtual summit named ‘She STEM!’ to emphasize the need for gender equality, as part of the Sweden-India Nobel Memorial Week 2020.

Heland added, “What we wanted to do with the event was to give inspiring samples of success stories and role models to help encourage these young girls and women pursue careers in STEM.

Researches and studies show that the Indian economy could grow by an additional 60 per cent or US $2.9 trillion by 2025, only if parity is introduced between the number of women and men participating in the workforce.

In order to achieve that, a closer look at the respective barriers is very much necessary. Few of the most common barriers faced by the women in this aspect are–

1. Lack of support from household and double burden syndrome: A lot of women stay deprived of the basic support from family, which is very much necessary while pursuing any stream in education and career. Additionally, they have to face social stigmas such as ‘double burden syndrome’- women are expected to balance the dual responsibilities of work as well as home.

2. Gender stereotypes owing to culture and history: If taken a look at India’s historical accounts, it can be observed that women have been portrayed as unequipped for “intellectual” domains. Besides, women have been very recently associated with professions requiring extensive fieldwork, such as engineering. They were and sometimes, are supposed to have no ‘stable talent’ and hence could/ cannot make suitable career decisions.

3. Inadequacy of female role models in the field: Unfortunately, there are very few female scientists, etc. to look up to, for the female professionals who choose STEM as their career path.

4. Insufficient Infrastructure: Although 11% of the total colleges in India are exclusively reserved for women, the majority offer courses only in Arts and Commerce instead of Science.

Government programs and schemes such as Udaan have definitely helped quite a number of girls to advance in the field of education, but a lot more is left to do. The problem needs to be solved, starting at the very grass-root level- creating an environment where the ones interested in STEM are encouraged and provided with total support from household, society and government.