Girls and women represent half the population of the world yet their participation in scientific research is lagging. In many countries, this disparate contribution starts as early as school. In the U.S., for example, girls are less likely to take advanced calculus, physics, mathematics, and biology at high school level.
In many other countries, the number of girls opting to major in a science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) subject is significantly lower than that of boys. Women constitute only 35% of STEM graduates across the world and earn only 40% of STEM PhDs. Further, based on data from 146 nations, women scientists comprise only 30% of the STEM workforce, which includes academic jobs and faculty positions. This systematic loss of women at various stages of STEM education and careers is commonly called the ‘leaky pipeline’.
And at first glance, India appears to be an exception.
Where are the ‘leaks’?
At the school level, nearly all students have ‘science’ as a mandatory subject and (at least anecdotally) girls participate in science quizzes, Olympiads, summer schools, hackathons, and hands-on tinkering challenges. After class X, the enrolment of girls in the ‘science’ stream can be as high as 60%, with girls making up 46% of all class XII science pass-outs. In 2025 the Ministry of Education reported that for the first time in over a decade, more girls had cleared their Class XII examination in science than in the arts stream. This indicated a significant increase in the participation of girls in science education: according to data from 2014, 7.5 lakh more girls graduated from the arts stream than science. As a result, India boasts of the highest percentage of female STEM graduates worldwide, with 43% women science graduates at the bachelor’s level and nearly 50% at the masters and doctoral levels.
But beyond the encouraging statistics, India does have a leaky pipeline for women in STEM — except that it looks different from the rest of the world.
In spite of producing the highest number of female STEM graduates, women constitute only 18% of the research and development workforce in the country. A Department of Science and Technology report reveals that women constituted less than 30% of scientists in India’s national research agencies; the highest representation was in the Indian Council of Medical Research at 29% and the lowest in the Defence Research and Development Organisation at 14%. Women also make up only 8% of faculty at the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore and 11-13% of scientists at the IITs. While university settings, both government and private, report higher representation, the figures are still lower than 30%.
The typical Indian milieu
What this means is that while women in India enter STEM education in large numbers, they are under-represented in scientific research jobs. This ‘leaky pipeline’ persists due to a combination of social, structural, and systemic challenges.
In schools, girls in India are often encouraged to pursue science and those interested in science are considered to be ‘good’ or ‘smart’ girls, with ‘wanting to become a scientist’ looked upon favourably by teachers, peers, and parents. Yet as women advance in their science education — the pursuit of which can require several years of training and commitment — social expectations pose barriers to their career plans. Completing a PhD often coincides with the search for a research job as well asfamilial directives to ‘settle down’, bear children, and ‘focus’ on the household. In India’s typical socio-cultural milieu, women often relocate to their husband’s place of living, adjust to a new family structure, and handle the larger share of childcare and household responsibilities, all of which pose significant challenges to seeking lucrative scientific research jobs and positions.
Scientific recruitment across government research organisations have strict age cut-offs, especially at entry-level positions, in addition to erratic hiring practices, a dearth of positions, and specific mandates for certain fields of research. For women, given geographic constraints and familial responsibilities, accessing these long-term jobs means doing so within the age eligibility and in a defined location, factors that result in a limited pool of options. Academic jobs also don’t allow for remote work; while certain roles may allow for flexible and hybrid work models, they typically don’t directly involve research or teaching.
Position gap
At the level of the research ecosystem, some of these social and structural challenges are being addressed via special recruitment drives and funding schemes for women scientists. In spite of these measures, institutions lag in ensuring gender parity at the time of recruitment, and gender equity initiatives have either been limited to pilot projects, are not appropriately incentivised, or are associated with minimal accountability.
Consequently, the majority of women PhD holders in STEM in India find themselves unable to access long-term, lucrative and prestigious research jobs. This results in a position gap, where women scientists often have to contend with short-term, contractual, precarious, and unstable positions, such as those found in quasi-academic initiatives, entities funded on grants, fellowships, or ‘soft money’, positions without full-spectrum benefits, promotions or increments, and roles with limited career advancement.
The big ‘leak’ in India’s STEM pipeline, as seen by the sharp loss of women scientists during the transition from science education to the research workforce, is a consequence of social, structural, and systemic challenges — and is reflected in the position gap that precludes the majority of trained women scientists from long-term and sustained participation in scientific research.
Karishma S Kaushik is a physician-scientist and scientific consultant. She has recently published a book for girls and women seeking to pursue STEM education and careers.
Published – March 08, 2026 08:00 am IST
