Women make up a third of IIMs' flagship course batch

Almost one in three students in the incoming post graduate programme (PGP) batches at the country's leading Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) this year is a woman.

The flagship two-year PGP class of 2024 across IIMs like Bangalore, Calcutta, Indore and Kozhikode has at least 30% women - about the same as the class of 2023 - as they have almost wrapped up the admission process for the incoming PGP batches, officials at the institutes told ET.

While IIM Ahmedabad has 23% women representation in the incoming PGP batch this year, down from 28% last year, Kozhikode has increased its representation of women students to 46% from 38%.

At IIM Bangalore, there are 142 female students in a batch of 480 compared to 144 female students last year with the same batch size. For IIM Calcutta, the female student numbers are slightly down at 135 this year against 149 last year.

IIMs are going the extra mile to improve diversity in the campus. IIM Calcutta has recently introduced a new gender diversity policy that allows four additional points to ensure gender diversity after meeting the minimum overall and other academic requirements, its spokesperson said in an emailed response.

To further augment the overall classroom diversity, IIM Kozhikode has also announced 50 supernumerary seats for international candidates for its three PGP offerings for 2022-24, its director Debashis Chatterjee told ET. "The graduating batch of 2022 comprised more than 50% female participants and the cohort secured an 8% higher average CTC than the male counterparts," he said.
IIM Ahmedabad, however, does not give extra credits or specify a quota for gender. "The goal is to achieve a diverse batch that brings together meritorious candidates from different educational and professions," its chairperson-admissions, MP Ram Mohan told ET.

The push for diversity also comes from recruiters, as per IIM officials as well as recruiters.

"Corporates do prefer a diverse pool, but this is not the only consideration," said Shrihari Sohani, chair - PGP at IIM Indore. "They ultimately look for the right fit... Such fits are easy to find in a diverse pool at the campus."

Global consultancy firm BCG, one of the top recruiters at IIMs, said it looks for a diverse talent pool while hiring from the campuses.

“Diversity is strongly correlated to firm performance. It’s a priority agenda for us,” said Suresh Subudhi, head, India people team, at BCG. “We are always on the lookout for talent that has diverse backgrounds that strengthens our talent pool and hence position in the market,” he said.


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