From Times of India

Found a nice article in the times of india today:

Women have been on top for a while now – statistically, we mean. But it was still a surprise to many when engineer Shubhra Saxena topped the

UPSC exam, and the other two in the top three were also women.

The girls-can’t-do-maths variety of misconceptions persist, it seems, but the girls couldn’t care less.

‘Shaadi ho jayegi’
Shilpa Niyogi, who is doing an MTech in anthropology, says, “I topped my college in BTech. My parents and teachers were proud of me, but my relatives asked me how long I’d be studying all these subjects. ‘You’ll get married in a few years,’ they’d say. Now, I’ve also earned a scholarship for higher studies at the Singapore University. In terms of percentage, even if seven-eight women feature in the top 20, it still is high, considering that fewer girls than boys appear for these exams, and out of those who do, almost all make the cut...” Academician Sachin Sharma, who also works as a counsellor in many Delhi schools, says, “No one will believe how many parents want their extremely bright daughters to settle down in the ‘comfortable job’ of a teacher. They ask me to convince their daughter to take up teaching. You name a field where women haven’t made a breakthrough and haven’t shown what they’re capable of.”

‘Maths vaths hai rabba’
Niharika Sharma, currently pursuing an MPhil in plant molecular biology from Delhi University, will soon be moving to Australia for four years to pursue a PhD. “As opposed to the common perception, excelling in subjects like science and maths has nothing to do with one’s gender. Society expects a girl to finally settle down in marital bliss. My family is supportive, but at times, they also worry about my future. They know, however, that I’m not going to sit at home.” “It is still the common perception that girls do well when it come to languages and other subjects that don’t need analytical and reasoning powers,” says Sushmita Ray, an XLRI passout, who’s now working with a financial consultancy firm in Delhi. “When girls top the CBSE exams, everyone says, ‘Let’s see who’s on top at the university level.’ The percentage of girls who take admission in IIMs and IITs is less, but the numbers are slowly increasing. During placements, all the girls from our batch got placed before the boys. This is not to say that they weren’t good enough, but it was heartening to see that the companies were more than forthcoming when it came to recruiting girls.”

‘It’s a girl? How nice!’
Sociologist Rekha Dutta maintains that despite the general sentiment that it’s a more equal society now, somewhere, we’re still stuck in the old notions of what a woman should and can do. “Year after year, girls top the CBSE exams, a higher number of girls pass the exams as compared to boys, bell the CAT, and now, three women have topped the UPSC exams. Everyone thinks we have an egalitarian outlook, but our surprise when we read these things says a lot about our expectations. We’re pleasantly surprised because we’ve been conditioned to assume that boys will do better than girls in such exams, but when girls do better, we sit up and say, ‘Yeh hui na baat’.” Psychologist Anu Goel blames the Indian social setup, which still expects the mother to be at home if the child is unwell. “It’s always said that women make pathetic drivers, and when a girl zooms past them, people assume she’s the aberration. The same mindset also works when we compare boys and girls in the educational field.”