Why women entering technology need more than access to education

This article is authored by Soumitra Mishra, head of academics, Newton School of Technology.

In 1974, while completing her postgraduate engineering studies at the Indian Institute of Science, Sudha Murty saw a recruitment notice from TELCO, now Tata Motors. It sought bright young engineers but ended with five blunt words: “Lady candidates need not apply.”

Women in tech (Shutterstock)

Murty wrote directly to JRD Tata. She was invited to Pune for an interview and went on to become TELCO’s first woman engineer. Her education had given her the qualification. It had not given her an ordinary route into the profession. A postcard had to open that door.

Five decades later, the barrier is less likely to be printed at the bottom of an advertisement. It is more likely to be hidden in the journey home, the project group, the professional network or the institutional average.

According to the All India Survey on Higher Education 2023-24, fewer than one in three undergraduate engineering and technology students in India is a woman.

Now look at the National Institutional Ranking Framework for engineering. Women’s representation sits inside outreach and inclusivity, which carries 10% of the total score, with institutions assessed against a benchmark of 50% women students. Graduation, placements and salaries are measured separately for the student body as a whole.

An institute can admit women in large numbers and place them at a lower rate than their male classmates, yet report only the combined placement outcome. The gender gap disappears inside the average.

India collects figures on students who graduate. What remains difficult to see is a connected account of how many women persist, secure internships, find placements and continue into engineering work.

Much of that journey is informal. The formal curriculum is identical for every student. The rest of engineering is not. Engineers are also made in project teams, late-night debugging, hackathons, referrals and conversations with seniors. Confidence grows when a student is invited into the room and trusted with work that is hard. Exclusion from those rooms appears in no policy document, yet it shapes careers.

School success is largely individual: Study, examination, score. Engineering is collaborative. Progress depends on who works with you, answers your questions and recommends you for difficult assignments. Access to a classroom cannot guarantee access to these relationships. Safety and travel restrictions also shape who can stay late or attend an overnight event.

The objection to targeted support arrives quickly: That it means lowering the standard. The evidence points elsewhere.

A randomised study followed 150 women interested in engineering at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, through graduation and one year beyond. Among those assigned a female peer mentor in their first year, 82% secured an engineering internship, compared with 61% without a mentor. Grades did not differ significantly. The examination did not change. What changed was access to a woman who had already travelled the same path.

The study is American and small. India now needs comparable evidence of its own.

The first step is measurement. Publish gender-disaggregated retention, internship conversion and placement figures alongside intake, and include them in the engineering ranking framework. Once the number is public, responsibility for improving it becomes harder to avoid.

Then act on it: Introduce structured first-year mentoring, form project teams deliberately, allocate valuable assignments transparently, and treat safe transport and hostel access as academic infrastructure rather than welfare. Some measures are inexpensive. Others require investment. None requires lowering expectations.

Sudha Murty should not have needed a postcard simply to be considered for an engineering job. Today’s barriers are quieter, but quiet barriers still shape who participates, progresses and stays. Education opens the door. Institutions must take responsibility for what happens on the other side.

(The views expressed are personal)

This article is authored by Soumitra Mishra, head of academics, Newton School of Technology.