[satish]

I would like to share the recent article of HT publised on 10th june 2007

Civil Services - Men loosing out to women

THE CIVIL services preliminary examination might just be one of the last bastion of men. But they win this battle, only to lose the war.

Men make up for 80 per cent of the 2 lakh candidates appearing for the first tier of the civil services selection process, account for 92 per cent of the 6,000 odd clearing this hurdle but then lose their advantage to women at the finals.
Nearly 20 per cent of those entering the civil services are women, the same percentage that had tried to clear the first hurdle.
Women, however, more than make up their low percentage of 78 per cent in recent years at the main examination and the interview by a Union Public Service Commission panel.
S.P. Gaur, secretary of the Union Public Service Commission that conducts the selection process, suggested the higher suc cess ratio of women at the second stage examination appeared to be in tune with their better performance at academics at school level. Girls have a higher pass percentage than boys at higher and secondary school level.
Gaur said that at the main examination, women also had a better success ratio than men. The success ratio of women was 1:4.8; that for men 1:12.
In 1985, women made up for only 10 per cent of the entrants. In 2005, they accounted for 20.6 per cent of the final merit list. Results recently declared for last year's examination indicate women retained this proportion at 21 per cent. They also seem to be scoring better than the men within the overall rankings; 24 per cent of those allotted the Indian Administrative Service, 18.5 per cent of the Indian Police Service recruits and 15 per cent of those allotted the Indian Foreign Service were women.

Every third entrant is comfortable with rural India and writing in an Indian language RURAL RISE 26.9% entrants had rural background in 1991 and 33.7% in 2005