In the last five years, almost two crore women have enrolled in colleges and universities across the country to study STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) courses in the country. Between the academic years 2015-16 and 2019-20, 1,96,50,740 women had enrolled in STEM courses, according to the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) survey. However, the government said that it has no data on how many of them graduated and how many dropped out.
The data was revealed by the Minister of Education Dharmendra Pradhan at the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, December 1. Pradhan was answering a question by the All India Trinamool Congress MP Dr Santanu Sen. In 2019-20 alone, 41,40,997 women had enrolled in STEM undergraduate, postgraduate, MPhil and PhD courses combined.
Of all the states, Tamil Nadu saw the maximum number of enrollment. In these five years, TN alone saw an enrollment of 30,80,669 women students. It is followed by Uttar Pradesh with a total enrollment of 24,65,430 students.
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"The Department of Science and Technology has taken several steps to increase the participation of women in STEM for higher education. This includes implementation of women exclusive schemes like ‘Knowledge Involvement Research Advancement through Nurturing (KIRAN)’ to encourage women in the field of Science & Technology," Pradhan said. According to the World Bank Data, India has more women in STEM, compared to developed countries like the UK, the USA and Germany.