Leading Business Schools of the country in the non-IIMs category seem to have been successfully attracting more female candidates in comparison to IIMs. Leading the list this year is FMS, Delhi where women students account for a record 50.6% followed by XLRI Jamshedpur where fairer sex comprised of 38.6%; ISB Hyderabad & GIM Goa at 38% ; FORE School of Management Delhi at 35% while IIFT at 32% and SPJIMR at 30% (dropped from 41% to 30% for SPJIMR.)

This could be good news for the recruiters struggling hard to have a balance in their teams. In 2019 we mentioned in a report about 28% of the overall workforce of India constitutes female staff but as one goes up the ladder of corporate India (female population 48.5%), the number turns out to be abysmally low and remains stagnant. According to Prime Database, 67 of 1814 CXOs in NSE-listed companies are women as of Mar 2019. Read :

Gender Diversity Ratio in B Schools All-time high. B Schools transforming workforce landscape?

The other challenge often faced by many B Schools has been the skewed diversity ratio of the academic background of students. Until a few years ago, the CAT aspirants were found to be primarily from engineering backgrounds which has increased from around 30% to 35.1% from 2015-16 to 2019-20.

Among the data shared by some top B Schools, FORE School of Management, has been able to successfully attract a diverse set of cohorts from non-engineering backgrounds with varied academics – 31% from commerce, 13%, 9%, and 8% from management, science, and arts respectively, breaking an all time record to a whopping 62%. Apparently, such diversity of background is expected to break the bias and bring in different sets of views and learning experience in the classroom. Incidentally, it has also been noticed that more and more students from non-engineering backgrounds are now taking CAT.