International Day of Women and Girls in Science: India’s Journey

Women reach 44% of STEM students 2026 Data

Two delayed higher-education surveys, released together, show women at 44.0% of STEM enrolment in 2023–24: about 44.8 lakh of 1.02 crore students, up from 38.4% in 2014–15. Female gross enrolment rose to 31.2, the gender parity index stayed above 1 for a seventh year, and women made up 44.9% of college and university teachers.

Why it matters: the classroom door is now largely open. The open question is what happens after graduation.

National Science Day is about women 2026

India’s own science day, which marks C.V. Raman’s 1928 discovery, takes women scientists as its theme. Minister Jitendra Singh calls them “catalysts” of national development and points to women leading space and science projects.

An international day about AI and money, too 2026

The eleventh observance argues that equality in science now depends on four things together: technical STEM skills, AI tools and governance, social-science insight into who gets left out, and finance for women-led research and start-ups.

Why it matters: if women are absent from building AI and other new technology, their needs are more likely to be missed by it.

Parliament hears the 43% versus 18.6% gap 2026 Data

The government tells Parliament that women were 43% of STEM enrolment in 2021–22 but only 18.6% of the STEM professionals engaged in research and development. Of women in R&D, about 46% work in government institutions, 28% in higher education and 27% in industry.

Why it matters: it is the clearest official statement that participation in education and representation in research are different problems.

Science schemes merged into Vigyan Dhara Policy

The Cabinet folds the Department of Science and Technology’s three umbrella schemes into one, Vigyan Dhara, and names gender parity in science, technology and innovation as an explicit goal. Women-specific programmes continue under it, and WISE-KIRAN is later redesigned with larger fellowships.

Chandrayaan-3 lands near the lunar south pole Confirmed

India becomes the first country to soft-land at such a high southern latitude. Reports quoting ISRO officials say about 54 women engineers and scientists worked directly on the mission, and more than 100 women overall, in roles from system design to navigation and testing.

Why it mattered: it made visible a workforce that rarely appears on stage at launch briefings. It was still a team result involving hundreds of people.

CSIR-ASPIRE: grants just for women Policy

CSIR launches a special call for research grants with a woman as principal investigator, across life, chemical, physical, engineering and interdisciplinary sciences. About 300 three-year projects are selected.

Why it mattered: leading a funded project is the step that turns a researcher into an independent scientist.

KIRAN counts 2,200 women helped Data

DST reports that more than 2,200 women scientists and technologists benefited from its Women Scientists Scheme over five years, with fellowships for research, for science with social applications, and for training in intellectual-property law.

GATI asks institutions to change Policy

Instead of helping one woman at a time, the GATI pilot asks universities and labs to audit their own hiring, promotion, leave and safety policies, and to set targets for improvement.

Vigyan Jyoti starts with schoolgirls Policy

DST’s programme targets girls in districts where few women take up science and engineering, aiming to raise the number who enter STEM degrees at good institutions. By 2026 it was reported to cover more than 250 districts.

Two women lead Chandrayaan-2 First

Vanitha becomes the first woman to lead an ISRO interplanetary mission. Chandrayaan-2’s orbiter reaches lunar orbit and is still operating; the Vikram lander crashes during descent in September 2019, lessons from which shape Chandrayaan-3.

Gagandeep Kang elected to the Royal Society First

Kang becomes the first woman working in India to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in its more than 350-year history, recognised for work on rotavirus surveillance and vaccine trials that supported Indian-made vaccines.

The first International Day Confirmed

The world marks 11 February for the first time. The day gives schools, universities and governments a fixed moment each year to recognise women scientists and to publish new data on the gender gap. India marked its tenth edition in February 2025.

KIRAN brings women’s schemes together Policy

DST groups its women-focused programmes, including the Women Scientists Scheme started in 2002–03, under KIRAN. Its main idea is re-entry: helping trained women who left research for family reasons to come back. It later becomes WISE-KIRAN.

Tessy Thomas and the Agni missiles First

As project director, Thomas becomes the first woman to lead a major Indian missile programme, and is nicknamed the ‘Missile Woman’. She later heads DRDO’s aeronautical systems cluster as Director General.

CURIE builds labs at women’s universities Policy

DST starts funding research equipment and infrastructure in women-only universities, recognising that many women study at institutions with weaker labs than leading co-educational ones.

Kalpana Chawla flies in space First

Chawla, who studied aeronautical engineering at Punjab Engineering College before moving to the US, becomes the first India-born woman in space. She dies with six crewmates when Columbia breaks up on re-entry on 1 February 2003, and becomes a lasting role model for Indian girls.

Asima Chatterjee leads the Science Congress First

The organic chemist, already the first woman to win the Bhatnagar Prize, is elected to lead India’s largest scientific gathering, a symbolic step for women in senior science roles.

Rajeshwari Chatterjee joins IISc History

After a PhD at the University of Michigan, Chatterjee returns to the Indian Institute of Science and builds research in microwave engineering and antenna design, training generations of engineers in a field with almost no women.

Anna Mani joins the India Meteorological Department History

Mani leads work to standardise and manufacture weather instruments in India instead of importing them, later measures ozone and builds solar and wind-energy surveys. She retires in 1976 as a Deputy Director General.

Why it mattered: forecasting, aviation and agriculture all depend on reliable measurements that rarely get public credit.

Asima Chatterjee earns a DSc First

Chatterjee becomes the first Indian woman to earn a Doctorate of Science from an Indian university. Her work on alkaloids from Indian plants leads to anti-epileptic and anti-malarial compounds, and in 1961 she becomes the first woman to win the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize.

Kamala Sohonie’s Cambridge PhD First

In 1933 Sohonie had to argue her way into the Indian Institute of Science, whose director C.V. Raman was reluctant to admit a woman and set conditions on her study. Her work there earned her a place at Cambridge, where she completed a PhD in 1939, often described as the first by an Indian woman in a science subject.

Why it mattered: ability alone did not remove the barrier; she needed someone to let her in.

Janaki Ammal’s plant genetics History

Janaki Ammal works on chromosome studies and hybrid sugarcanes suited to Indian conditions, and is elected a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1935. She later co-writes the Chromosome Atlas of Cultivated Plants in Britain and is asked by Jawaharlal Nehru to help reorganise the Botanical Survey of India.

Two women qualify as doctors First

Anandibai Joshi, married at nine, travels to the United States and graduates from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania; she dies of tuberculosis in 1887, aged 21. Kadambini Ganguly, one of Calcutta University’s first two women graduates in 1883, completes medical training in Calcutta the same year and goes on to practise for decades.

Why it mattered: together they disproved the claim that Indian women could not be trained in modern science, and Ganguly showed that training could lead to a working career.