While the share of girls college students enrolled at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) in Lucknow and Calcutta has dropped since 2020, different centres of India’s premier enterprise college have reported modest will increase.
“I’ve noticed that having mentors, seniors, function fashions, like, on this case, extra girls college, attracts youthful girls college students,” mentioned Narayanan Ramaswamy, associate and head of the training and talent growth observe at KPMG in India.
“Older IIMs have a legacy and established procedures to comply with. This makes any change to their present standing extra gradual in comparison with their newer counterparts. So whereas the established B-schools are making efforts to enhance girls enrolment, it’s taking a tad longer for them,” Ramaswamy added.
The wrestle to make sure extra girls college students in India’s top B-schools comes whilst corporations emphasise range and inclusion whereas recruiting, making it essential for administration institutes to have a balanced gender ratio for higher campus placements.
At IIM-Visakhapatnam, which was established in 2015, the variety of girls college students has elevated from 31% of all college students within the 2020-22 batch to 51% within the newest 2025-27 batch. Other new IIMs, nevertheless, haven’t had related success.
IIM-Ranchi, which was established in 2009, noticed its gender ratio drop from 39.84% girls college students within the 2020-22 batch to 26.6% within the 2022-24 batch earlier than rebounding to 41.56% in final yr’s batch for the tutorial yr 2024-26.
At IIM-Raipur, which was established in 2010, the share of girls college students dropped from 41% in 2020-22 to 40% final yr. However, its 2023-25 batch had 60% girls college students.
The gender ratios for the Ranchi and Raipur college’s newest batch weren’t accessible.
While the Kozhikode and Indore IIMs, each established in 1996, have extra girls college students than males of their newest batch for the 2025-27 tutorial yr, at IIM-Calcutta (of 1961 classic) and IIM-Bangalore (1973), male college students dominate.
At the Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur (XLRI), which presents one-year MBA programmes, the variety of girls college students has elevated from about 37% in 2020-21 to about 46% within the incoming batch of 2025-26.
“This disparity in gender comes from the lopsided feeder pool as CAT (the Common Admission Test for the IIMs)—which is extra quantitative and STEM (science, know-how, engineering, and arithmetic) heavy—typically has extra male takers than females,” mentioned Avntika Tomar, associate at EY-Parthenon, training observe.
“Moreover, regardless of the campuses making efforts to enhance the safety and infrastructure of their campuses, the notion of some cities they’re positioned in issues dad and mom as among the IIMs should not positioned within the extra fascinating metro cities,” Tomar added.
In 2024, out of about 329,000 registered candidates for CAT, solely about 119,000 have been girls.
In the previous couple of years, IIMs have needed to work tougher to safe placements for his or her college students due to a hiring freeze following a post-pandemic hiring frenzy.
The rising company emphasis on range and inclusion, nevertheless, has India’s premier administration faculties on the lookout for methods to encourage extra girls college students to enrol.
“IIMs have been focusing extra on enrolling extra feminine college students, particularly with bonus marking,” said a senior official at one of the new IIMs. As part of the IIM admissions process, 2-10 additional points are awarded to women candidates. “This helps in the placement process as corporates prefer recruiting female candidates over men when they have the same merits and calibre,” the official mentioned.
Ria Dalal contributed reporting for this text.