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Paper short abstract

Despite expanded access to elite STEM institutions in India, women remain largely absent at senior academic and decision-making levels. This paper examines how gendered institutional designs shape women’s attrition after entry, showing why access-focused reforms alone fail to deliver equity.

Paper long abstract

Education is widely promoted as a pathway to gender equality in science and technology. In India, recent policy interventions such as supernumerary seats have sought to increase women’s access to elite STEM institutions, including the IITs, IISERs, and NITs. These measures have improved women’s representation at the point of undergraduate entry. However, women remain markedly underrepresented at advanced stages of STEM education and in academic and institutional decision-making. This paper argues that the most significant loss in the gender pipeline occurs not before entry, but within institutions themselves.

Drawing on preliminary institutional data, policy analysis, and qualitative insights from women students and academics in Indian STEM institutions, the study examines how women’s trajectories are shaped after entry. Rather than framing attrition as a matter of individual choice or capacity, the paper adopts Joan Acker’s theory of gendered institutions to analyse how ideas of merit, excellence, and success in STEM are implicitly gender-coded. Institutional structures are organised around an ideal academic pathway that assumes uninterrupted mobility, early international training, and sustained research visibility.

These norms are presented as neutral indicators of quality but are embedded in organisational designs that systematically advantage some trajectories over others. As a result, women who enter STEM institutions through inclusion policies often encounter narrowing pathways over time, leading to stalled progression, redirection into adjacent disciplines, or exit from STEM altogether. This patterned attrition contributes to the persistent absence of women at senior academic and decision-making levels despite gains at entry.