Women engineers in India lack access to resources for global high tech careers, says report
According to a report by TalentSprint, women engineers across India display great potential but don’t have the access to resources for global tech careers. Aiming to enable more female students, the company also launched its Women Engineers programme.
On July 9, TalentSprint released a report titled 'Aspiration for a Global Tech Career among Young Women Engineers' which compiled data based on the company's Women Engineers (WE) programme.
The WE programme, which is supported by Google, aims to give students from non-elite institutions and non-privileged backgrounds training and professional access to pursue high end global tech careers.
It received 7,276 applications from female engineering students across India, of whom the top 100 were invited to be part of its first cohort. Most of the applications were received from Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh.
According to the report, 50 percent of applicants were from cities, 28 percent were from towns, and 22 percent were from villages, and more than 2,000 applicants were first generation graduates from their families. The report says that there was a significant interest from applicants from, non-urban, low education and low income backgrounds, which was “in line with the objective of socio-economic inclusion.”
Despite a large number of women applying for the WE programme, only 42 percent of the applicants appeared for the qualification assessment. According to the report, this suggests that many of them voluntarily forfeited the opportunity, showing a correlation with the social bias that women are less confident among "potentially stiff competition."
Within the assessment, only 20 percent of the participants were able to score well in all the sections - writing, code reading, and qualitative reasoning skills. The report says this indicates that college education is not up to the mark while preparing students for careers in tech, because of which only one in five of the participants may be eligible for a top tier global tech career.
Dr Santanu Paul, Co-founder and CEO at TalentSprint, said,
“Poor gender diversity among top-tier technical talent is a widely acknowledged big problem among leading companies, and it is the primary driver for the WE programme. The analysis of WE applicants reveals there are many highly motivated women engineering students with great potential with no access to the right career tools in their immediate environment.”
A study by the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), also found that the unemployment rate for women engineers in India in 2016 was about 40 percent. Among those who are employed, 45 percent reported that they have to compete with their female colleagues to get the one 'woman's spot' available.
Going forward, the TalentSprint Women Entrepreneurs Programme aims to prepare 600 women engineers for global high tech careers over the next three years.
(Edited by Rekha Balakrishnan)
