NEW DELHI: Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers’ Association (JNUTA) has written to vice-chancellor Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit highlighting a skewed gender ratio in faculty appointments and among research scholars.
Between 2017 and 2020, only 17.7% of the faculty recruited were women, the teachers’ body said. It added that the share was 14% among posts reserved for OBCs and nil for posts reserved for STs and PwDs.
JNUTA claimed that the share of women scholars also dipped from 51% in 2015-16 to 41% in 2019-20.
In the letter to the VC, the teachers’ body said, “JNU through its system of deprivation points had established an admission system that facilitated the entry of women and students from remote and backward regions. As a result, the university had reached an enviable share of above 60% women among the admitted students. After dilution of the deprivation point system, the share has been steadily declining over the past years from 54% in 2016-17 to 45.5% in 2019-20.”
JNUTA secretary Sucharita Sen said, “We have a substantial number of research scholars and deprivation points are extremely crucial. For example, women would earlier get five points and this also helped us get a favourable number of students. Women face several barriers in their bid to achieve higher goals. Hence, it is even more important that deprivation points are allotted to students in higher education.”
Allotment of deprivation points was discontinued during the term of former VC M Jagadesh Kumar, the secretary added.
Sen also said that reinstatement of GSCASH (Gender Sensitisation Committee Against Sexual Harassment) was another aspect that the teachers’ body was looking at. “The ICC (Internal Complaints Committee), which replaced GSCASH, has not really served its purpose over the past few years. The ICC does not really have a gender sensitisation component,” she claimed.
