Your daughter’s smart enough to join IIT

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: “Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and follow where they lead.” — Louisa May Alcott
In 1971, I was in a small school in Coimbatore and I had never heard of IIT. One day my maths teacher said, “Do you know that some of the boys in your class are applying to IIT? You’re the first-ranker, so why are you not applying there?”

In 1976, I was one of only five girls who graduated along with more than 240 boys in my class. One would assume that a girl today would be as aware as a boy that IIT is an option, and would assume that she would be supported in her aspirations. One would be wrong. Twenty-five years later, I went back to the IIT campus for our silver reunion, and learned that in the B.Tech class of 2000, there had been only 18 girls along with 450-plus boys. (This represents an infinitesimal growth of the percentage of women graduates from 2.1% to 4% in twenty-five years). But given that women constitute a much higher percentage in non-IIT engineering colleges in India, it seems ironic that more do not join IITs.

What accounts for the drop to 4% for those who enter IIT? Is there a lack of motivation/self-confidence on the part of girls to attempt the IIT-JEE? Is it that many girls (especially in small towns) are not aware of IIT as an option for them? Do many get some subliminal message that teaches them to have low expectations for their career or that engineering is not for them? Are IIT-JEE coaching classes held at such hours when families would prefer to send girls accompanied by a male relative so that it becomes too much of a bother? Is one of the reasons the lack of role models in an India in which headline news is occupied more by “models” such as Lara Dutta or Priyanka Chopra?

In a well-researched article entitled “The Talibanism of Technology”, Deepa Kandaswamy writes that in spite of talented and successful women in technology, they have been rendered invisible through the ages, so that only men are associated with technology. She identifies six social myths that cut across cultural divides around the world: