Gender disparity in higher education in India an analysis of some socio-economic factors

Gender disparity in education is one of the root causes that push the women section back towards a lower socio-economic status. Male favouring gender disparity in education deprives the women section in achieving equal opportunities in the society. India has been experiencing recordable expansion in higher education in terms of coverage of large numbers of students and increase in the number of institutions and growth of public funds for this sector. But, question arises whether this type of unprecedented expansion is supportive to resolve the problem of male-female disparity in higher education in the country. So, in this paper, with the help of relevant secondary information, an attempt has been made to examine the present state of gender disparity in the country and to explore probable factors responsible for this issue. Here, six socio-economic variables have been selected to deal with the problem of gender disparity in higher education. Out of these, only four variables, viz.: per capita NSDP, level of poverty, drop out ratio for girls and women's age at marriage have statistically significant correlation with the women enrolment in higher education.