Women’s Access to Higher Education in India

Abstract

Human capital is the most precious of all recourses which is core for the development of a nation. Higher education is regarded as the basis for the foundation for human development. It has constant positive impact on development as they help in reducing unemployment and poverty which are hurdle in the path of Economic development. Higher education enhances people’s capacity to work and their opportunities to work; promoting innovation ensures work satisfaction and also increases productivity there by contributing to national development. Women frame an indispensable human capital for enhancing economic power of a nation. It is rather unfortunate that women, powerful human resource constituting half of India’s total population and yet the country has one of the biggest gender gap in the world (101 in 136 Countries). This mirrors the status of women in India and gender discrimination in all aspects of life – education, economic activity and empowerment. The representation of women in higher education management validate the the fact that half of the human resource is not optimally utilized. Progress of a society is possible only when its citizens are educated, dynamic, resourceful, enterprising, responsible and so forth. Without such citizens, development of a country can hardly be achieved in any field. This paper attempts to study specifically the major factors affecting enrollment of women in higher education in India.