Assessment of Gender Parity in Faculty Employment at Higher Education Institutions in India

Abstract

The research is supported and funded by The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), Trieste, Italy, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), New Delhi, India and National Institute of Science Communication and Policy Research (NIScPR), New Delhi, India. Abstract India is one of the countries in South Asia that is striving to fulfill Sustainable Development Goal 5 which is to propagate gender equality. It has achieved gender parity in higher education institution enrolment but not yet in faculty employment. This paper assesses gender parity in employment at higher education institutions in India with focus on teaching faculty and also measures the relationship between the numbers of female junior faculty and numbers of female pass outs at postgraduate level. The data source is AISHE reports from 2010/2011 to 2019/2020. The result shows that increasing numbers of highly educated women in India is in proportion to the number of junior faculty. It however shows that although there is an increasing trend in the number of female junior faculty (with the gender parity gap closing up at this rank) there are few females at senior faculty rank (with a wide gender gap). Statistical analysis shows that there is a positive and significant relationship between female junior faculty and sum of female postgraduate pass out. However, the p-value=0.003 of the combine independent variables (postgraduate pass out) being lower than the significant level (α=0.05) signifies that not all independent variables determine the dependent variable. The assessment of individual p-value of each independent variable shows that only PhD pass out with p-value (0.81) greater than the significant level (α=0.05) determines the numbers of female junior faculty in higher education institutions in India. Gender oriented government policies that will intentionally promote the inclusion of women into full senior faculty rank and other leadership positions is thereby needful. Keywords: Gender parity, female faculty, tertiary education institution, India DOI: 10.7176/JEP/13-13-03 Publication date: May 31 st 2022