The Delhi University Teacher’s Association (DUTA) General Body Meeting recently announced that it would extend its strike, which is part of a series of agitations that have rocked the University since the beginning of this year, to the 8 of March. One of the main demands of the strike, which included a march from Mandi House to Jantar Mantar, is the regularisation of Ad Hoc faculty.

An interesting paradigm to analyse the issue of regularisation with is gender. Female representation in higher education has historically been abysmal in India, with gender equality in admissions levelling up as recently as 2016, according to UNESCO study.

But according to a 2018 paper by Mike Thelwall and others, gender inequality remains stark in research with 1.5 male first authors per female first authors in India. The 2018 UN Human Development Index ranks India 130th out of 189 countries. The results reflect a poor female labour participation (27.2% female vs 78.8% male).