Festival of Gender & STEM: 10th March 2026

Event Report by BSP & STEMtheGap

Introduction

On 10 March 2026, the STEMtheGap team at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi organised the Festival of Gender & STEM, a vibrant series of events designed to celebrate International Women’s Day. Hosted primarily in the bustling lobby of IIT Delhi’s Lecture Hall Complex (LHC), the festival’s central location attracted hundreds of B.Tech, PG, and PhD students. The team curated a host of interactive events for students that balanced rigorous data with engaging activities to raise awareness about women’s experiences at technical institutions like the IITs and foster conversations about a more gender-inclusive campus environment. These activities were complemented by a thought-provoking panel discussion, which brought together faculty and students to examine the intersections of gender, technology and society.

Interactive Events

The festival’s interactive events were structured across four key formats, namely research posters, an interactive data dashboard, games, and a menstrual cramp simulator, each designed to translate complex and often overlooked research on gender disparities and the structural barriers women in STEM face into engaging, hands-on experiences.

1. Research Posters: These displays highlighted critical research on gender gaps in STEM, ranging from the structural barriers that women still face in engineering and technology spaces to the “leaky pipeline”—the documented phenomenon where women are pushed out of academic careers following graduation. Researchers explained that the supernumerary seats scheme (SSS) had increased the number of women in the B.Tech degree from a low 8% in 2017 to 20% by 2020, across all departments of all IITs, except IIT Kharagpur. Students learnt about how the scheme functions with the algorithm being designed to leave male students’ seats unaltered. Another poster explored how campus layout and the built infrastructure can make for differing experiences for males and females on campus. For instance, IIT Delhi’s female B.Tech students use only one-third of the campus in contrast with male students. Additionally, a glimpse into what an inclusive AI might look like (in the form of MenstLLaMA, a model trained on conversations across menstrual lived realities) was explained by another poster.

2. Data Dashboard: Based on the VIDWAN Expert Database, which is a nationwide repository of scientists, researchers and faculty across Indian academic and R&D institutions, the dashboard provided a “big picture” view of women faculty representation and standing in IITs across the country. The gender inequalities reflected in the data were striking, with many students reacting with visible surprise as they confronted the reality of the current statistics. For instance, the percentage share of women faculty across IITs is a mere 11%, with IIT Delhi performing the best among the older IITs and IIT Palakkad among the newer ones. Another factoid that raised eyebrows was the percentage of females in leadership in IITs, which stands at a dismal 10%.

3. Games: The team designed a suite of interactive games, including Gender Gap Quiz, Fact or Fiction, Stat Slider, Memory Match, Scientist Scramble, and Timeline Tracers, to engage the Institute community with key facts, figures, and historical contributions of women in STEM, particularly in the Indian context. For example, Gender Gap Quiz, a question-based game, challenges players with facts about women in STEM, ranging from the global percentage of women working as AI professionals (22%) to the proportion of STEM graduates in India who are women (43%). Similarly, Stat Slider invites players to estimate statistics such as the percentage of Indian startups led by women (18%), or the share of global venture capital funding worldwide that goes to startups founded solely by women (3%). By guessing and then seeing the actual data, the games encouraged players to confront their own biases in real time. Across all games, data-driven insights were combined with common misconceptions to encourage students to reflect on gender disparities, and deepen their understanding of representation in STEM fields. Students tested their knowledge with much enthusiasm, learning more about the “other half” in science and technology. 

   
   

4. The Menstrual Cramp Simulator: This emerged as a significant point of engagement, particularly among undergraduate students. The activity allowed participants (primarily male) to metaphorically “step into women’s shoes” by experiencing a simulation of menstrual pain, an often-overlooked reality in women’s everyday lives. Female undergraduate students actively encouraged their male friends and classmates to participate, fostering a shared space for understanding and empathy. Encouragingly, many male participants showed a genuine willingness to engage with and reflect on the difficulties faced by women. Some acknowledged that attending classes, labs, and extracurricular activities while coping with menstrual pain requires considerable strength and resilience, while others recognised the gap between theoretical awareness and lived experience with respect to period pain. As one male student remarked, “Women are much stronger than men…we don’t define strength correctly”. This increased awareness led many to reconsider their perspectives and express a commitment to being more sensitive towards menstrual health concerns. Another student, encouraged to try the simulator by his female friend, noted, “Girls deserve breaks; people should accommodate their needs…leaves should be mandatory.” Overall, the simulator created a valuable place for conversations around a topic that is often considered taboo in our society, where such stigma around menstruation continues to curtail women’s agency. In this context, STEMtheGap researchers highlighted both the existing challenges and the importance of gender-responsive infrastructure on campus, such as menstrual aid vending machines, clean and accessible toilets and designated rest spaces.

The ‘Gender & AI’ Panel

Beyond the lobby activities, the festival featured a formal panel discussion on ‘Gender & AI’. The panel included Prof. Subodh Sharma (CSE), Prof. Rijurekha Sen (CSE), Samidha Verma (PhD Scholar, School of Artificial Intelligence), and Samridhi Roy (B.Tech, Mathematics and Computing) with Prof. Ravinder Kaur (HSS) as moderator.

While artificial intelligence is often marketed as a neutral tool of the future, the STEMtheGap panel revealed a more complex reality: technology is only as equitable as the data and the people behind it. 

The discussion began by challenging over-sensationalised “alternate-world” narratives, focusing instead on AI’s real-world potential to either entrench systemic inequality or serve as a weapon for democratising access to knowledge. While AI has the potential to create a level-playing field (for instance, by enabling high-quality tutoring for girls restricted by social norms and improving medical outcomes with diverse datasets), these rewards are blocked by a severe underrepresentation of women in the field. 

Prof. Kaur noted that while 40% of work skills are expected to shift due to AI by 2030, women comprise only 22% of the global AI workforce and around 30% of engineering students, a figure that has remained largely stagnant for a decade. In a similar vein, Prof. Subodh flagged that only 3% of women entrepreneurs in AI have secured venture capital funding, arguing that meaningful change requires addressing the representation gap in the boardrooms and laboratories where these technologies are designed. Even within IITs, despite the supernumerary seats scheme increasing female enrollment from 8% to 20%, a persistent “quota backlash” continues, despite evidence that women perform at par with or better than their peers.

Exploring whether it is possible to “code out” centuries of human bias, the panel examined how prejudice permeates every stage of AI development, from skewed datasets to the subtle leakage of gender and race through indirect proxy variables. Given that AI systems are inherently inductive and market forces often prioritise performance over fairness, the panelists argued that the solution must emerge through collective action. As Prof. Rijurekha observed, academia must pursue questions that industry overlooks, while communities must build transparent, public datasets to expose bias and demand accountability in the absence of robust regulation.

The discussion also challenged assumptions around women’s engagement with AI. Rather than stemming from a ‘caregiver’ lens, as is often suggested, Samridhi pointed to the influence of “tech bro” culture that delays women’s adoption of AI. Samidha pointed to a pervasive “competency double standard”: while men are often seen as ‘strategic’ for using AI tools, women avoid AI because they risk being perceived as “incompetent” or overtly dependent on technology. 

To address these barriers, the panel emphasised the need for pedagogical shifts centered on normalising failure and building visible mentorship networks. Samidha noted that initiatives such as women-focused hackathons and increased visibility of senior women within technical institutions can help dismantle the scepticism over women’s competency that continues to marginalise women in STEM environments. Extending this argument, Prof. Rijurekha noted that just as institutions once ensured equitable access to devices during the pandemic, they must now provide licensed AI tools to prevent further marginalisation of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. 

By way of closing remarks, the panel underscored the importance of prioritising safety, consent, and inclusivity in technological design. This includes regulating surveillance-heavy tools such as smart glasses, and diversifying development teams to identify ‘blind spots’ such as non-standard naming conventions. Only through such sustained efforts by institutions, the panel concluded, can AI evolve into a genuinely inclusive tool for economic and professional participation.

Conclusion

The Festival of Gender & STEM, one among several events at IIT Delhi marking International Women’s Day, served as a vital diagnostic of gender equity within technical institutions including IIT Delhi. It moved the conversation beyond abstract awareness toward data-driven accountability. By combining interactive dashboards with experiential simulations such as the menstrual cramp simulator, the event demonstrated that the 11% share of women faculty across IITs and the persistent “leaky pipeline” are not merely statistics, but indicators of structural challenges requiring immediate and deliberate institutional intervention. These challenges range from the need for gender-responsive infrastructure to addressing the “quota backlash” that often undermines the recognition of women’s academic excellence. The Gender & AI panel further provided a critical reality check, emphasising that technology is never neutral; it only reflects our biases. The call for academia to prioritise socially-conscious research over purely profit-driven innovation, alongside efforts to dismantle the entrenched “tech bro” image of AI, sets a clear agenda for institutions, including IIT Delhi. Encouragingly, the discussions among students revealed a strong and growing appetite for a more gender-inclusive STEM culture, one that is not only equitable in principle, but actively supported by institutional practices.

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References:

1. The supernumerary seats scheme was introduced to improve gender balance among undergraduate students at IITs which have historically been male-dominated. However, representation of female students has plateaued at 20% since 2020, reflecting persistent cultural and societal barriers that continue to limit further progress. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/education/news/why-female-admissions-at-iits-are-stuck-at-20-and-whats-really-holding-progress-back/amp_articleshow/124308855.cms

2.  To populate the dashboard the team used data from the VIDWAN Expert Database. The database is maintained by the Information and Library Network Centre (INFLIBNET) in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, and is funded under the National Mission on Education through ICT of the Ministry of Education, India. It builds on two earlier expert registries: the University Expert Database (1999) and the Expert Database in Science and Technology (2001), both of which were later merged and relaunched as VIDWAN in 2012. At the time of data scraping, VIDWAN contained approximately 223,864 expert profiles across 19,805 institutions, covering almost all central and state universities, IITs, IISERs, IIMs, NITs, private universities, colleges, and top R&D institutions. The dashboard will be made available to the public by April 2026 on www.stemthegap.com 

   
   

3.  According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), 40% of job skills are expected to change by 2030. https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_Report_2025.pdf 

   As per WEF’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025, women represent only 22% of the global AI workforce. https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2025.pdf

4.  Proxy variables refer to “variables that indirectly capture information about a sensitive attribute, such as race or gender… even when the original attribute is not explicitly used.” 

   Source: https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/Proxy_%28sensitive_attributes%29