What explains the gender divide among teachers in India's higher education?

Of the teachers in India's higher education ecosystem, 58 per cent are male; Bihar has the most skewed gender balance

As India honours its teachers today, Business Standard draws on the data released recently by the Ministry of Human Resource Development to explore the demographic profile of teachers in India.

Of the roughly 1.2 million teachers involved with higher education in India in 2017-18, 58 per cent were male and 42 per cent female. While a marked gender variation exists across states, a disaggregated analysis shows that Bihar fares the worst gender proportion among all states. The female-to-male teacher ratio is estimated at 1:4 in Bihar, which is followed by Uttar Pradesh, with only 32.8 per cent female teachers.

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