CHENNAI, India — Chaitra, a 20-year-old third-year electrical engineering student, represents somewhat of a rarity at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras: She is a female and that group represents only 18 percent of the school’s students.
If you ask Chaitra what enabled her to be among the select few, she credits her upbringing by her parents, who are both engineers.
Her father is a mechanical engineer at a private company where he serves as vice president. Her mother is an assistant engineer and a government employee.
“I was lucky because my parents had given me a good education,” Chaitra says. “They had brought me up just like if they had a male child. They respected my ambition.”
Such is not the case for girls in general, according to Chaitra.
“The parents of guys, they invest more in the guy,” Chaitra says. “They get a whole better coaching. The kind of coaching we receive is not the same as the guys take.”
She also says many Indian parents try to get their daughters married off at a young age — at about age 20 — as opposed to having them focus on higher education.
