Women lead India's higher education boom, outpace men in GER

The standout trend in India's higher education data isn't just rising enrolment—it's women leading the surge. In the recently released All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2023-24, women are clearly leaving the men behind. Released by the Education Ministry on Wednesday, the report showed female Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER), a measure of access to higher education as a percentage of the eligible population aged 18-23, jumped to 31.2%, from 28.9% among men.

This trend, which has solidified over the last three years, shows female GER grew from 28.5% in 2021-22 to 30.2% in 2022-23, before jumping to 31.2% in 2023-24. Male GER, on the other hand, only rose from 28.3% to 28.9%, where it stagnated in 2023-24. This caused the female lead to expand from just 0.2 percentage points in 2021-22 to 1.3 points in 2022-23 and a substantial 2.3 points in the latest survey.

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"Female GER continues to be more than male GER for the seventh consecutive year," the AISHE report notes. Moreover, the all-India Gender Parity Index – the ratio of female to male GER – has also climbed consistently from 1.01 in 2021-22 to 1.04 in 2022-23, and then to 1.08 in 2023-24, signaling sustained growth, not a one-off anomaly.

Women are not just joining higher education, but have become almost equal participants. They comprise 49.7% of the 4.50 crore students enrolled in higher education in the country, with their numbers rising from 2.07 crore in 2021-22 to 2.18 crore in 2022-23, and to 2.24 crore in 2023-24, a growth of nearly 17 lakh women in just two years. As overall enrolment only grew by the same number in this period, women virtually accounted for the entire net increase.

Their presence is even more dominant in postgraduate studies, where they account for 56.2% of enrolments. This suggests a steady pipeline beyond bachelor’s degrees, and their participation is robust across social categories too: 50.3% of Scheduled Caste (SC), 52.3% of Scheduled Tribe (ST) and 49.9% of Other Backward Classes (OBC) students are women.

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The survey details impressive gains for all groups of women. The number of SC female students rose from around 31.7 lakh in 2021-22 to 33.9 lakh in 2022-23 and 35.1 lakh in 2023-24. For ST women, the numbers went from 13.46 lakh to 14.67 lakh and then 15.08 lakh, while for OBC women they grew from 78.19 lakh to 85.32 lakh and then 90.05 lakh. These translate into growth rates of around 10.7%, 12.0%, and 15.2% for SC, ST, and OBC women, respectively, over two years.

Across states too, the narrative is similar. In 2023-24, female enrolment outnumbered male enrolment in Bihar (14.0 lakh vs 13.6 lakh), West Bengal (12.5 lakh vs 12.0 lakh), Telangana (9.1 lakh vs 8.7 lakh), Kerala (7.4 lakh vs 5.4 lakh), Haryana, Punjab, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Assam and Uttarakhand. The North East as a region also saw a favourable female presence, with 7.0 lakh women enrolled compared with 6.2 lakh men.

However, the picture is less rosy in technical education. While women have made strides everywhere, in core technical courses like Engineering and Technology at the undergraduate level, they still lag. The proportion of female students in this field rose only modestly from 30.1% in 2022-23 to 31.1% in 2023-24. So while access to higher education has increasingly tilted towards women, the gender divide in technical fields remains an area of concern.