Your daughter’s smart enough to join IIT

VIJI RAGHUNATHAN

“Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and follow where they lead.” — Louisa May Alcott
In 1971, I was in a small school in Coimbatore and I had never heard of IIT. One day my maths teacher said, “Do you know that some of the boys in your class are applying to IIT? You’re the first-ranker, so why are you not applying there?”

In 1976, I was one of only five girls who graduated along with more than 240 boys in my class. One would assume that a girl today would be as aware as a boy that IIT is an option, and would assume that she would be supported in her aspirations. One would be wrong. Twenty-five years later, I went back to the IIT campus for our silver reunion, and learned that in the B.Tech class of 2000, there had been only 18 girls along with 450-plus boys. (This represents an infinitesimal growth of the percentage of women graduates from 2.1% to 4% in twenty-five years). But given that women constitute a much higher percentage in non-IIT engineering colleges in India, it seems ironic that more do not join IITs.

What accounts for the drop to 4% for those who enter IIT? Is there a lack of motivation/self-confidence on the part of girls to attempt the IIT-JEE? Is it that many girls (especially in small towns) are not aware of IIT as an option for them? Do many get some subliminal message that teaches them to have low expectations for their career or that engineering is not for them? Are IIT-JEE coaching classes held at such hours when families would prefer to send girls accompanied by a male relative so that it becomes too much of a bother? Is one of the reasons the lack of role models in an India in which headline news is occupied more by “models” such as Lara Dutta or Priyanka Chopra?

In a well-researched article entitled “The Talibanism of Technology”, Deepa Kandaswamy writes that in spite of talented and successful women in technology, they have been rendered invisible through the ages, so that only men are associated with technology. She identifies six social myths that cut across cultural divides around the world:

• Myth 1: Women are emotional while tech is strictly logical. As a result, they don’t go together.

• Myth 2: Men are good at math and machines while women have no clue about these.

• Myth 3: Men are the providers while women are nurturers.

• Myth 4: Technical women are unattractive, arrogant, and abnormal.

• Myth 5: Women can’t do it because they are made that way: the divine or the evolution argument.

• Myth 6: Women aren’t as good at visualising as men, and hence, don’t make good engineers.

In early 2002,I started an e-group for women alumnae (IITwomen@yahoogroups.com). Today there are hundreds of women alumnae from the seven campuses who have joined this group from all over the world. We know that our IIT education has had a great positive impact on our careers and lives, and we plan to approach schools and suggest to educators and parents that clearly a message is reaching young girls that society is more comfortable if they settle for less. Within IIT, one often did not even hear of many opportunities or help available.

It is true that while the networking among male IITans is being credited for the success of much entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley and elsewhere today, the miniscule numbers of past female graduates makes for very few role models so that a girl embarking on a career does feel more alone. Schools, teachers and parents can be made aware of the old prejudices creeping into their treatment of girls’ vs boys’ highest ambitions. Media can do a much better job of giving visibility to both the successful women and the inequities if any that keep them from getting there. Alumni (both men and women) can take time out to go into schools to motivate girls to think about IIT if they’re thinking about engineering as a career.

An IIT education gives you a great framework for analysing problems, and they do not necessarily have to be in the field of technology for them to be useful to society. Let us hope that the next 25 years will be very different for girls, so that they can take equal advantage of the global branding.

The writer is vice-president, Union Bank of California, US. An IIT Madras graduate, she will be in New Delhi later this month to attend the Pan IIT (of which she is a member) conclave.