Vol. 7, Issue 1, Part L (2025)

Neoliberal reforms have reshaped the governance of education worldwide, reducing the role of the state and privileging market-oriented approaches. In India, while elementary education has been safeguarded as a state responsibility, higher education has become increasingly privatized, elitist, and accessible primarily to those with economic, academic, and social capital. This paper examines how neoliberal restructuring since the 1990s has impacted gender equity in higher education, particularly in terms of access, participation, and discipline choice. Despite significant increases in women’s enrollment globally and nationally, gendered patterns of participation persist. Women remain concentrated in less market-driven fields, while structural barriers including patriarchal norms, cultural stereotypes, economic burdens, and the competing demands of higher education and marriage continue to restrict their opportunities. Neoliberal reforms, by transforming education into a commodity, further disadvantage women from marginalized caste and class backgrounds, reproducing systemic inequalities. Middle-class families often deploy higher education as cultural capital, even mobilizing it as “educational dowry,” reinforcing gendered expectations rather than dismantling them. The paper employs feminist theoretical perspectives—liberal, socialist, radical, and postmodern to analyze these dynamics. Liberal feminism emphasizes equal opportunity, socialist feminism situates inequalities within capitalist structures, radical feminism highlights patriarchal control over knowledge and discipline choices, and postmodernist strands underline the differentiated effects of globalization and neoliberalism across women’s diverse social locations. The paper concludes that neoliberal reforms have intensified rather than reduced gender disparities in higher education. Addressing these inequities requires treating education as a public good while engaging critically with feminist theories that reveal both structural barriers and the multiplicity of women’s experiences.