Women Entered Classrooms. Why Haven’t They Reached the Top?

India has made remarkable progress in bringing women into higher education. But when it comes to who runs its universities and premier institutions, that progress appears to stop well before the corner office.

In 2014–15, India had about 3.42 crore students enrolled in higher education, of whom 1.57 crore were women. By 2023–24, total enrolment had risen to 4.50 crore, while female enrolment had climbed to 2.24 crore. In other words, while overall enrolment grew by about 31.5%, female enrolment grew substantially faster — by 42.2%.

Women are no longer a marginal presence on Indian campuses. They are students, researchers, teachers and academics in very large numbers. But the higher one climbs up the academic hierarchy, the fewer women one finds.

India had about 17.32 lakh faculty members in 2023–24, of whom women constituted approximately 44.9% – 7.78 lakh. Yet at the level of professor, the picture changes dramatically: there were roughly 44,000 women professors compared with 1.06 lakh men.

And at the very top, the imbalance becomes stark. As per one estimate, just 7% of Indian Vice-Chancellors are women.

This is the paradox of Indian higher education today: women are approaching parity in participation, but remain nowhere near parity in power.

The most striking example comes from the Indian Institutes of Technology.

India has 23 IITs. Not one is currently headed by a woman. More remarkably, none of the 23 India-based IITs has ever had a woman director. IIT Kharagpur was established in 1951. More than seven decades later, the IIT system is still waiting for its first woman director. Dr Preeti Aghalayam heads IIT Madras' Zanzibar campus, an offshore campus, rather than one of the 23 IITs within the country.

Among 31 National Institutes of Technology (NITs), only one is currently headed by a woman—Dr G. Aghila, Director of NIT Tiruchirappalli. That translates to just 3.2% representation. Even more telling is the historical record. NIT Tiruchirappalli is also the institution where Dr Mini Shaji Thomas became India's first woman NIT Director in 2016. According to data, no other NIT has ever had a woman Director.

So, across one of India's largest networks of elite engineering institutions, female leadership has effectively been concentrated in a single campus.

This raises an uncomfortable question: if women are already present in engineering academia, why does the leadership pipeline narrow so dramatically by the time Director-level appointments are made?

The All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) show that a different outcome is possible. The contrast between India's premier engineering and medical colleges is instructive. Among the 20 operational AIIMS institutions covered in the data, four are currently headed by women. That is still only a 20% representation even though women experience health complications more.

The leaders include Prof. Meenu Singh at AIIMS Rishikesh, Maj. Gen. (Dr.) Vibha Dutta at AIIMS Gorakhpur, Prof. Amita Aggarwal at AIIMS Bibinagar Hyderabad and Prof. Amita Jain at AIIMS Rae Bareli. The appointments are also relatively recent: all four assumed their current leadership roles 2022 onwards, with several appointments made in 2025.

Women reaching the top is not an impossibility created by the absence of qualified candidates. Institutional systems can produce very different outcomes. Law universities perform better—but still fall short.

National Law Universities also fare better than engineering institutions. Of the 27 NLUs covered, five are currently led by women, representing 18.5%. They include Prof. Harpreet Kaur at NLU Jodhpur, Prof. Priti Saxena at HPNLU Shimla, Sr Prof. Usha Tandon at RPNLU Prayagraj and Prof. Achina Kundu at Sikkim NLU, along with an in-charge Vice-Chancellor at NLU Meghalaya.

Among 49 of India's 56 Central Universities for which leadership could be confirmed, eight were led by women — 16.3%. The list includes women heading some of India's most prominent universities, including Prof. Naima Khatoon at Aligarh Muslim University, Prof. Santishree D. Pandit at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Prof. Uma Kanjilal at IGNOU and Prof. Sangita Srivastava at the University of Allahabad.

But even this figure needs qualification. Three of the eight women were serving in an “in-charge”, or interim capacity, rather than holding a confirmed full-term appointment. A recent AIU study claimed that only 7% of Indian Universities have women as Vice Chancellors.

India does not lack policies for women. It would also be wrong to argue that India has ignored gender equity altogether. A considerable policy architecture already exists.

Supernumerary seats [1]were introduced in IITs to raise female undergraduate participation. The Department of Science and Technology launched GATI, modelled on the Athena SWAN framework, to examine gender equity in STEM institutions. NEP 2020 provides for a Gender Inclusion Fund. Institutions are required to constitute Internal Complaints Committees under the framework governing sexual-harassment complaints. NAAC accreditation also considers gender-equity initiatives and women's leadership programmes.

Policies have increasingly focused on helping women enter institutions, remain in them and participate more fully. The leadership numbers suggest that far less attention has been paid to what happens when those women seek to move from lecturer to professor, from professor to dean, and from dean to Director or Vice-Chancellor.

The real gender gap begins after entry. The aggregate picture is difficult to ignore.

Women constitute nearly 45% of faculty, yet their representation in leadership across major public institutional systems ranges from 0% in IITs to 20% in AIIMS. The data places NITs at 3.2%, Central Universities at 16.3%, NLUs at 18.5%, and AIIMS at 20%.

That suggests the question is not merely whether qualified women exist. It is also about how institutions identify leaders, how search and selection committees are constituted, whose administrative experience gets recognised, who receives opportunities to become heads of department and deans, and how institutional networks shape appointments.

Women now constitute a substantial part of the academic workforce. The next reform must therefore go beyond counting how many women enter campuses.

The numbers suggest that India's academic glass ceiling is no longer primarily at the university gate. Women have crossed that gate in enormous numbers.

The glass ceiling is now inside the institution. While we talk of Women’s Reservation Bill, smashing the patriarchy etc., a beginning has to be made through education, in academia. Can we do it?