Women Are Only 5.5% of ITI Enrolment in Core Engineering Trades, a NITI Aayog Working Paper Finds

The news

Manesar (Haryana) / New Delhi. A new NITI Aayog working paper has found that women accounted for only 5.5% of enrolment in engineering trades such as electrician, fitter and welder across India’s Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) between 2019 and 2024, The Indian Express reports. In contrast, women outnumbered men in several service-oriented trades such as fashion design, cosmetology, secretarial practice and sewing technology. An ITI is a post-school vocational institute that trains students in a specific “trade” — the term for a defined vocational course — usually over one or two years, leading to a national trade certificate that factories and workshops recognise. The Express illustrates the finding with a report from the Japan-India Institute for Manufacturing (JIM) at Manesar, one of four such institutes set up by Maruti Suzuki, the country’s largest automaker. JIM Manesar offers five two-year trades — Mechanic Motor Vehicle, Electrician, Fitter, Electronic Mechanic and Electrician-Mechatronics — and four one-year trades: Mechanic Diesel Engine, Welder, Mechanic Auto Body Repair and Mechanic Auto Body Painting. In one class of 40 students, just three are girls. Women account for around 9% of its annual intake of about 400 students, up from 5% the previous year and 2% when the institute began, and it is targeting a 30% female share of admissions by 2028-29. Across the four JIMs, only the Manesar branch has female students; the other three are yet to admit women. The institute is trying a dedicated women’s hostel, more women among faculty and support staff and, from this academic year, a 100% tuition fee waiver for female students, said Rahul Bharti, Senior Executive Officer, Corporate Affairs, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. The hostel matters because most female students come from other parts of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh and live in paying-guest accommodation. One student from Sonepat told the paper the course lets her sit a polytechnic entrance exam and enter its second year directly, a route she could not take earlier because she had not studied physics and chemistry. The Express notes that the reporter’s trip was organised by Maruti Suzuki. The syllabus link is GS1 on the role of women and GS3 on employment, skilling and manufacturing growth.

Static syllabus linkage

1. ITIs sit under the Directorate General of Training in the Skill Development Ministry. Industrial Training Institutes run the Craftsmen Training Scheme, which began in 1950, and are affiliated to national standards set by the Directorate General of Training (DGT). The DGT was moved from the Ministry of Labour and Employment to the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) in 2015. ITIs may be government or private, and admission usually requires passing Class 8 or Class 10 depending on the trade. Engineering trades such as electrician, fitter and welder lead to shop-floor jobs, while non-engineering trades cover services. The Apprentices Act, 1961 governs on-the-job apprenticeship, which is the bridge between an ITI certificate and a factory job.
2. NCVET is the single regulator for vocational qualifications. The National Council for Vocational Education and Training (NCVET) was notified in 2018 by merging the National Council for Vocational Training and the National Skill Development Agency. It regulates awarding bodies and assessment agencies and approves qualifications aligned to the National Skills Qualifications Framework (NSQF), which grades skills into levels so that vocational learning can be compared with and linked to formal education. The Skill India Mission was launched in 2015, and the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), also launched that year, provides short-term training and recognition of prior learning. National Skill Training Institutes for Women, earlier called National Women’s ITIs, train women and train women instructors.
3. Women’s labour force participation has risen but remains concentrated in agriculture and self-employment. The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), conducted by the National Statistics Office under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation since 2017-18, measures the labour force participation rate (LFPR) — the share of people working or seeking work. Female LFPR has risen substantially since 2017-18, but much of the rise is in rural self-employment and unpaid family work rather than salaried factory jobs. Barriers identified in research include care work, safety in travel, restrictions on night shifts in older factory law and social norms about suitable work. The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 allows women to work at night with their consent and subject to safety conditions.
4. NEP 2020 aims to end the hierarchy between vocational and academic education. The National Education Policy, 2020 calls for integrating vocational education into mainstream schooling from the middle stage, including a ten-day bagless period in which students intern with local vocational experts such as carpenters and gardeners. It set a target that at least 50% of learners should have exposure to vocational education by 2025. The policy argues that vocational streams have been seen as inferior, which is why they attract students by default rather than choice. The polytechnic lateral-entry route mentioned in today’s report is an example of the vertical mobility NEP seeks.

Why UPSC loves this

1. GS1 asks about women’s participation in the workforce. UPSC has asked why female labour force participation in India has been low and what explains the gendered division of work. The ITI data shift the question from whether women work to which work they are channelled into, a sharper framing.
2. GS3 links skilling to manufacturing and demographic dividend. Questions on Skill India, the employability gap and India’s ambition to become a manufacturing hub can use this finding: a manufacturing workforce drawn from half the population will face skill shortages.
3. Essay and GS4 use gender and work as recurring themes. Essay topics on women’s empowerment and on the dignity of labour benefit from concrete examples such as a woman welder or electrician, which show empowerment as capability, not symbolism.

Analysis

1. The problem is not that women avoid ITIs but that ITIs sort them into lower-paying trades. Women outnumber men in fashion design, cosmetology, secretarial practice and sewing, so they are clearly enrolling in ITIs. What the NITI Aayog figure shows is occupational segregation: the trades with factory wages, overtime and career ladders are 94.5% male. Service trades often lead to informal, home-based or low-wage work. A skilling system that reproduces the gender division of the labour market is not neutral; it locks in the wage gap at age sixteen. This is why counting female ITI enrolment in aggregate hides more than it reveals.
2. Employer-run institutes can move faster than government ITIs, but their numbers are tiny. JIM Manesar’s rise from 2% to 9% women, with a target of 30% by 2028-29, shows that a hostel, female faculty and a full fee waiver change behaviour. Employers have a direct incentive: they need workers and face diversity expectations. But four institutes with about 400 students each are a drop against the national ITI network, and three of the four JIMs still admit no women. The public policy lesson is to copy the package — safe housing, women instructors, fee support — across government ITIs, not to rely on corporate goodwill. The report’s own note that the trip was company-organised is a reminder to read success claims with care.
3. Safety and mobility, not aptitude, are the binding constraints. The Express notes that most women at Manesar come from elsewhere in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh and live in paying-guest rooms, which is why the hostel matters. Families weigh the risk of a daughter living away from home and commuting at odd hours; factory jobs add shift work. This connects the ITI story to today’s other society card on unsafe public spaces: a woman who fears a dark park will also be kept from a distant workshop. Investment in hostels and safe transport is therefore labour policy, not welfare.
4. Removing the academic dead-end can pull more girls into technical trades. The Sonepat student chose the course partly because it lets her enter a polytechnic’s second year without the physics and chemistry she lacked. Girls in many schools are steered away from science streams, which then bars them from engineering diplomas. A vocational route that restores mobility to higher technical education makes a trade course a ladder rather than a last resort. This is exactly NEP 2020’s intent, and it should be advertised to girls’ schools explicitly.
5. Quotas alone would not work without demand-side change. A reservation for women in engineering trades could raise enrolment quickly, but seats unfilled for lack of applicants, or graduates unhired by factories, would discredit the policy. Demand-side steps — employer commitments to hire trained women, women-friendly shop-floor facilities, and night-shift safety — must accompany supply-side incentives. The counter-view is that visible targets create role models that change norms over time; the balanced answer is targets with support, not targets alone.

Administrator's brainstorm