Girls deserve equal access to tech and STEM education

The ed-tech sector, rightly so, has been celebrated for quickly and efficiently making education accessible through technology in a highly disruptive education environment caused by the pandemic. Ed-tech also has the promise of helping traditionally underserved girls and women of India pursue Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics education, leading to far better career options for them. We need to understand the hurdles and the facilitators for women and girls in accessing STEM education, something that the government has rightly sought to address through its various schemes. According to the annual All India Survey on Higher Education report, which compiles enrolment in undergraduate, Masters, and PhD-level programmes, between 2017-18 and 2019-20, there is a growth of almost 54,000 in the number of women in STEM whereas there is a decline of about 59,000 in the number of men enrolled in STEM studies. In a written reply to the Lok Sabha last year, Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, citing the World Bank data, noted that in terms of percentages, there are more Indian female graduates in STEM at the tertiary level than in developed nations like the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and France.