IIM Sambalpur beats IIM Ahmedabad, Bangalore in gender diversity – records all time high girl enrollments

Sambalpur: In a rare feat, IIM Sambalpur has trumped IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Bangalore in achieving gender diversity on their campus. The institute has achieved the rare feat of enrolling more girls than boys for the 2019-20 batch. While the exact numbers of IIM Bangalore and IIM Ahmedabad are not known, the Director of IIM Sambalpur has confirmed that with just over 50%, the institute has the highest percentage of girls in the batch.

It is important to note that in actuals the numbers are still very less. Of the total 98 students admitted in IIM Sambalpur, 50 are girls. This sets it as the highest percent enrolment for girls in an IIM. For IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Bangalore – the top two IIMs, the percent usually oscillates between 27 to 32%.

What is remarkable is that in the previous year, IIM Sambalpur with no female enrolment was right at the bottom in terms of gender diversity. For 2018-20 batch, IIM Ahmedabad had just about 26% females while IIM Bangalore has about 28%. The only IIM that continues to maintain high number of enrollments was IIM Indore which had 39% women in the 2018-20 batch.

Director of the IIM -S, Mahadeo Jaiswal said: "The number of the girls, taking admission in IIM-S is the highest among the IIMs in the country. Proper communication about the institution and the growth of the institution besides good placement record are the reasons, which attracted more number of girl students to this institution".

The director added that the achievement is important as IIM Sambalpur has worked hard towards mending the divide. He noted that there were many who had questioned the location of the institute. Speaking with ANI he added, "But we made consistent effort to disseminate the proper information about the IIM-S and location in the last few year as a result a result more number of girls have taken admission this time."

As for the massive increase in female students, Jaiswal pointed that it was the result of active policy decision changes which gave relaxation in the cut off to girls. The cut off for girls was reduced to 90 percentile while for boys it was set at 95 percentile. The institute also took active measures in spreading information regarding the program.

Though the actual numbers may make people wonder at the extent of the feat, for the relatively new IIM this is a stride towards a hopeful tomorrow. The best Indian institutes, both Indian Institutes of Technology or IITs and IIMs suffer from a gender bias in the classrooms. While HRD has introduced supernumerary seats for women in IITs, the trickledown effect is yet to be seen in various IIMs that have a massive in-take of engineers.