Gender-gap in JEE Main 2025: Female participation remains around 31%, overall pool drops by 7.09%

NEW DELHI: Male candidates continue to dominate JEE Main session 2 exams 2025, making up over 68.7% of the total participants. Out of the total 9.92 lakh candidates, only 31.3% are represented by girls, while the participation of transgender dropped to zero. JEE Main result 2025 (out) live updates.

The data shows a significant gender gap in engineering entrance examination and a stark underrepresentation of female and transgender categories.

The National Testing Agency (NTA) declared the Joint Entrance Examination Main (JEE Main 2025) final results for BE, BTech paper 1 exams. The JEE Main session 1 was held from January 22 to 29 and session 2 from April 2 to 8 for paper 1 exams. The JEE Main paper 2 for BArch and BPlanning was administered on the last date in both sessions - on January 30 and April 9.

JEE Main session 1 saw an increase in the number of registered candidates with 12,58,136 taking part in the exam - an increase of over 1.9 lakh candidates compared to the previous year.

Male candidates dominated this year as well, by making up 66.23% of the total candidates, while participation of female candidates increased by nearly 3 percentage points (33.73%). Representation of transgender candidates decreased from 8 to 2 this year, but only 1 appeared.

Also read JEE Main 2025 Toppers: Rajasthan leaves Telangana behind to claim the highest number of rank holders

This year, a total of 10,61,840 students registered for JEE Mains 2025 exams, of which 9,92,350 appeared in the session 2 exams. Gender-wise participation in NTA JEE Main is given below.

How many female candidates qualify JEE Adv?

Of the 2.5 lakh top JEE Main rank holders, a total of 1,80,200 candidates appeared in both papers 1 and 2 in JEE Advanced exam held last year for IIT, NIT admissions. Out of the appeared candidates, 48,248 candidates secured qualifying marks, of which 7,964 are females.

The JEE Advanced topper 2024 or AIR 1 obtained 355 out of 360 marks. He scored 117 marks in mathematics, 118 in physics, and 120 in chemistry. While the female topper scored 332 out of 360, by securing 106 in maths, 115 in physics, and 111 in chemistry. “Out of 3495 female students admitted to various programs, 15 female candidates got seats through the gender-neutral pool of seats last year,” as per last year’s JEE Advanced results.