Women researchers in India get eight months continuous maternity and child care leave

• The women researchers in the field of science will now be benefited with 240 days of maternity and Child Care leave — once during their M. Phil and PhD programmes.
  
  
• The government has also made provisions for relocation to facilitate women scholars who are married and want to build a career in science.
  
  
• As of now, women account for a third of the PhD awardees in the research programmes.

The Indian government is introducing several initiatives to improve the quality and participation in the field of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) — especially to girls.

The women researchers in the field of science will now be benefited with 240 days of maternity and Child Care leave through their M. Phil and Ph.D programmes. That means, these research fellows will be eligible for an eight month continuous leave during the course.

In addition to this, the government has also made provisions for relocation to facilitate women scholars who are married and want to build a career in science. In fact, the higher education regulatory body University Grants Commission (UGC) now also grants relaxation of up to two years for women.

“When given an opportunity, women have excelled in every area including STEM. Government has taken several measures to encourage and promote participation of women in STEM including special relaxations & easy availability of resources,” Smriti Irani, Minister of Women & Child Development said in a tweet.

As of now, women account for a third of the PhD awardees in the research programmes.

Push for STEM education at the school and university level

Women represent a minority in the world of science at a mere 30%; and only 35% of the STEM students are women. To boost participation, the government said that it has established 16 universities across 13 states catering exclusively to women.

This has also given rise to female enrollment across higher education institutions. As per the government statistics, female students represent 48.6% (18.2 million) in higher education — up from 44% in 2014.This is almost at par with the male enrollments that account for 19.2 million.

The female students registering at the elite Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs) also went up for engineering programmes.

Not just that, there has been a significant rise in the number of women faculty staff too. Nearly 400,000 women are employed as faculty staff across institutions in the country. This is more than double the number of faculty members in 2011, when the female count was 153,167.

See also:

STEM jobs: Here are the average annual salaries for STEM-related job roles

India tops the world in producing female graduates in STEM but ranks 19th in employing them