Universities, colleges have more male teachers than females: Study

New Delhi: There are more male teachers in Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) in the country than females, with the lowest gender proportion in Bihar, according to the All India Survey of Higher Education (AISHE) by the HRD Ministry.

Similarly, the non-teaching staff in varsities and colleges comprises of more men than women. "The total number of teachers are 14,16,299, out of which about 57.8 per cent are male teachers and 42.2 pc are female teachers. The lowest gender proportion is recorded in Bihar where 78.97 pc are male teachers and only 21.03 pc are females. "Jharkhand comes close second with 69.8 pc male teachers and 30.2 pc female teachers.

Uttar Pradesh has 32.3 pc female teachers of the total teachers in the state. A few States like Kerala, Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Delhi and Goa on the other hand have more female teachers than male teachers," the survey report said. For the annual survey, the higher education institutions are categorized in 3 broad categories-university, college and stand-alone institutions.

A total of 962 universities; 38,179 colleges and 9190 stand alone institutions participated in the survey for the year 2018-19. "At All-India level there are merely 73 female teachers per 100 male teachers. For Muslim minority, it is 57 female teachers per 100 males whereas for other minority, there are 151 females per 100 male teachers. However, the female representation of teachers belonging to Persons with Disabilities (PWD) category is low, that is 37 female per 100 male teachers," according to the survey.

"Looking at female per 100 male teachers, there are 58 teachers at university level, 76 and 71 female teachers per 100 male teachers at college and stand-alone institutions, respectively," it said.

The only course which has highest number of female teachers than males is nursing. "For different types of stand-alone institutions, the number of female teachers per 100 male teachers varies significantly as there are only 47 female teachers per 100 male teachers in technical or polytechnic institutions, 68 in teacher training, 61 in management institutions and 18 in institutions under ministries which is the lowest.