Positive discrimination favours female candidates at top

By Soroor Ahmed (NVONews.Com)

What is interesting is that while women candidates are repeatedly doing well at the top in Civil Services examination in the last over a decade, their performance in other prestigious under-graduate competitive examination do not match with the boys.

Though a much larger percentage of girls appear in all India under-graduate competitive examinations like IIT, AIEEE or CBSE Medical examination their success rate at the top is not as high as in Civil Services. True the number of girls qualifying medical test are more than engineering, yet the number of them topping these all India under-graduate exams are few and far between.

What is again more interesting is that girls do top at all India level quite frequently in Class-X and XII examination of CBSE, ICSE and other boards.

By the time female candidates reach the age to appear in the Civil Service examination most girls get transformed into full-fledged women. That is, they either get married or have children or are well settled with their spouse. The girlish zeal to fight back starts fading among many of them by that time they late 20s.

Yet the results show something else, that is, they have bagged the first two positions once again.

This notwithstanding the fact that the number of female candidates who qualified this year has in fact decreased in comparison to last year––195 in 2011 against 203 in 2010. A few years back all the top three positions were bagged by them. In 2001 even a Muslim candidate from Bihar, Shahla Nigar, stood all-India second. The topper that year too was a woman.

This variations in results––right from Class-X to Civil Services––need to be analysed properly.

It shows that the female candidates, who make up the mind to take up Civil Services exams, do not let factors like marriages, family life etc come in the way of their success. Therefore, they do well and even top the examinations.

But many may ask: the same can be true to male candidates too.

However, one factor which differentiate the fate of male and female candidates is personal interviews, viva or group discussion. Not only in the Civil Services much larger number of girls crack various MBA admission test too.

As gender sympathy works in favour of female candidates their success rate at the top is much better in Civil Services and management examinations in comparison to engineering and medical tests, where there is no such scope. Even in Class-X and Class-XII girls do good marks in Project work and practical as they are given internally on the basis of viva.

A 25-30 marks more to any candidate in interview or viva makes a big change.

This is called positive discrimination––or affirmative action. Since women or girls had to cover a lot of ground they  are often given preference. But sometimes discrimination in favour of girls and women are grossly misused, especially in private sector for obvious reasons.

The unwritten positive discrimination policy regarding women is not questioned, but when the same is adopted for any other weaker section of the society much hue and cry are raised. When a woman tops the list she is applauded––and she should be––but if a reserved category candidate gets some preference in his ranking in the same Civil Services results he would be looked down upon and  sneered.

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Posted by admin on May 5, 2012. Filed under Featured, Latest, National, Op-Ed, Top News, Top Story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry