Marking a departure from earlier years, the number of women joining the post-graduate programme in management at the Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode (IIMK) has gone up in the new batch for 2010-12.
The list of candidates released by the institute comprises 30 per cent women.
The largest number of female candidates are from the engineering stream (80 per cent), followed by commerce and arts streams.
According to IIMK officials, while almost 25 per cent of candidates who apply for the Common Admission Test (CAT) every year are women, not many used to make it to the short list of the IIMs.
New selection process
This year IIMK introduced an innovative selection process by which in addition to CAT, consistent academic performance of candidates were also taken into consideration for short-listing and final selection.
The Director of the institute, Prof. Debashis Chatterjee, says that IIMK is pre-eminent among the B-schools in the country to acknowledge the competencies such as networking capabilities, social intelligence and caring that women bring to the repertoire of management skill sets.
Reservation norms
It is also pointed out that IIMK was the first management institute to meet reservation norms before the government makes it mandatory.
This year also, the institute made calls in all categories to meet the reservation norms of 27 per cent for OBC-NC, 15 per cent for SC, 7.5 per cent for ST and three per cent for people with disability.
Another notable feature of this year's list is that the number of engineering graduates has come down to 85 per cent from 90 per cent, with commerce and arts streams making up the rest.
There are also six candidates with medical degrees in the list.
