Chandan Sharma

Last month was the month of results. Various boards including CBSE, state Boards, ISCE have announced their results. Results of prestigious examinations like IIT-JEE, Civil Services, AIEEE, PMT and other career oriented examinations had been announced last month.

But what similarities have been found in the board examination results is that the girls have undoubtedly left boys behind in their performance whether it is 10^th examination or 12^th examinations in such a manner that media had to struggle to find out some interesting headlines as if headlines like ‘girls outshine again’ or ‘girls perform better’ became passé due to their overwhelming performance in these examinations.

Though girls have  done better in most of the board examinations including CBSE and ICSE and state boards examinations but here I would like to mention UP Board results in which girls have left state boys far behind.   Girls’ pass percentage in 12^th UP Board examination is 89.6 % while boys’ percentage is just 73.5%. In other words boys’ performance was 16% lower than girls result. In 10^th examination girls have with 77.29% pass percentage (13.08% better than boys). Boys’ pass percentage is just 64.2 %. It is notable that over 47 lakh students appeared in both the examinations and over 42 percent students were girls. 

Need not to mention that girls have done much better job than boys in these examinations due to their sincerity, hard work, support of parents, teachers and government even in the states like UP where large population still live in villages or sub-urban areas in underdeveloped conditions. This is despite the fact that girls have to share a big stake of burden of the general house keeping and other household works throughout the country, especially in the underdeveloped areas.

But the performance report suddenly changes when the result of career oriented examinations or competitive examinations are concerned. This is another side of the coin. In UPSC’s Civil Services examination only 195 female candidates could get seats for the various civil services out of total 875 selected candidates.

In IIT-JEE too girls’ share too is very thin. Only 1476 girls candidates could crack IIT-JEE out of 13104 successful candidates. This is less than 1.2% of the total selected candidates while over 1.3 lakh girls candidates appeared in the examination out of over 4.5 lakh candidates. In other words, just 1.2 girl candidate was selected out of 100 while selection of boys is much higher and it is about 3.5 candidates out of every 100. Or, it is better to say one candidate was selected out of every 30 boys, who appeared in JEE. This figure suddenly turns the table of the myth (or say fact) that girls are better than the boys.

The situation is same in the field of management too whether it is CAT or any other examination.

It is wrong to say that girls can not compete with the boys. The result of civil services says different story. Ten out of top 25 candidates in the prestigious UPSC’s examination were girls. This is enough to say about girls’ potential. But where does problem exists – the mindset and money. Our society is not ready to still hesitant about spending a huge amount to provide quality education to the girls. Result of IIT-JEE, which is rather become a test of well polished students (of coaching centres) than the genuine natural talents, is an example of it. Most of Indian parents are not ready to spend the heavy fee of coaching institutes for their daughter to qualify JEE. The same is true for MBA too. In fact, there are many cases when girls get selected for MBA or Engineering courses but they could not get admission due to lack of financial support from their parents.

This does not happen to boys normally. Parents are not only ready to pay hefty amount for courses but also for coaching classes. This is enough to understand the dichotomy of Indian mindset. This applies to many other countries too as well.

As far India is concerned, in a patriarchy society girls are considered as ‘Paraya Dhan’ (other’s asset) which will go to other’s home after marriage with a good amount of dowry.  In such a case it is considered as wastage of money if they study expansive courses like MBA or Engineering. But if the cost of such course (which comes around three lakh to 16 lakh) is reduced through some mechanism or subsidy in case of girls, at least, the scene can be changed easily. Government has not yet started any consideration in this direction for women empowerment. Apart from politics, government, institutions and our stake holders of the society should think in this direction for true and financial empowerment so that India could get more women leaders in the field of science, business and management and other area.