In the last eight years, more women have enrolled in higher education compared to men, according to the 2021-22 All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) released on Wednesday.

In fact, women make up 55% of the total increase in overall enrollment (91 lakh) in higher education since 2014-15.

According to the latest survey report, out of the total overall enrollment of 4.33 crore, 48% or 2.07 crore are women. Back in 2014-15, the percentage of women in the total enrollment of 3.42 crore was 46%.

According to the report, since 2014-15, women enrolment has shown a steady increase. Women enrollment climbed by 18.7% during the course of five years, from 2.01 crore in 2020-21 and 1.74 crore in 2017-18 to 2.07 crore in 2021-22.

“The share of women enrolment is 55% of the increase in overall enrolment (91 lakh) since 2014-15. There has been a higher increase in women enrolment as compared to men,” the report observed.

Overall, the trend indicates a closing gender gap in higher education. Among the areas where women made a mark, is the science stream, in which of the total 57.18 lakh students enrolled at the undergraduate, postgraduate, MPhil, and PhD levels, 52.1% are women.

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At the undergraduate level, about 51% of the total enrolled are women in the science stream. In 2020-21, 55.48 lakh students were enrolled in science, of which 53.1% were women, showing a slight dip.

At the PG level in science, women make up 61.2% of the 7.52 lakh students enrolled. Over half of the 45,324 students enrolled in PhD programmes 62% in the science discipline are women compared to only 39% men. The annual increase in women PhD enrolment from 2014-15 to 2021-22 is 10.4%, the latest AISHE survey revealed.

The gap, however, is stark in the engineering and technology discipline. Among the total enrolled students, only 11.3 lakh are women and 27.6 lakh are men in the undergraduate programmes.