India’s scientific ambitions are increasingly visible in space missions, pharmaceutical research, and peer-reviewed scholarship. Yet, its institutional culture that sustains this continues to marginalise many researchers. Women in academia, especially in mid-career stages, face a convergence of professional and domestic responsibilities that their male peers rarely experience to the same extent. Age relaxation provisions in research grants were introduced to address this gap, but as these policies evolve, they require closer scrutiny to improve their effectiveness rather than weaken them.

The legal foundation for gender-sensitive research policy in India is not merely permissive; it is, in important respects, directive. Article 15(3) of the Constitution allows the state to make special provisions for women and children, and this has long been read as enabling affirmative measures in employment and public opportunity. Article 16 reinforces equality of opportunity without precluding measures that correct historical disadvantage and read alongside the Directive Principles which speak of equal right to an adequate means of livelihood. There is a coherent constitutional argument that funding agencies have not just the authority but also a degree of responsibility to ensure women researchers are not structurally penalised for caregiving.

Article 51A(e), the fundamental duty to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women, adds another dimension. A policy environment that routinely produces grant cohorts with negligible female representation is not a neutral outcome — it reflects accumulated disadvantages that the constitutional framework obliges institutions to address.

The legislative gap at heart of the problem

The Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017 remains the most substantive legal protection available to women. The 2017 amendment extended paid maternity leave to 26 weeks for women with fewer than two surviving children and introduced provisions for crèche facilities in larger establishments. For women in academic research, this matters — but imperfectly. Many researchers at the postdoctoral or early career stage are employed on fellowships, project positions, or contractual appointments that fall outside the clear ambit of the Act.

Equally overlooked in current frameworks is the return to research after childbirth. Women returning from maternity leave often face disrupted laboratory work, changed collaborations, and misaligned grant timelines, with little formal support for reintegration or reduced workload. The expectation of immediate full productivity after childbirth is unrealistic and requires clear policy intervention rather than informal goodwill from supervisors.

India has no central legislation on paternity leave. Central government employees receive 15 days under the Central Civil Services (Leave) Rules, 1972, but this is administrative rather than statutory, and no comparable entitlement exists for researchers funded through extramural grants. This legislative asymmetry — generous maternity protection, minimal paternity provision — is not incidental. It shapes how institutions and funding agencies think about caregiving, and it partly explains why age relaxation policies have been designed exclusively around women rather than around the act of caregiving itself.

The case for women-specific support in research funding is supported by persistent data, not assumption. The All India Survey on Higher Education (2021-22) shows that the higher education system had nearly 16 lakh faculty in 2021-22 with 57% male and 43% female. Women remain underrepresented in faculty positions across central universities and especially in science and technology institutions. The Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) has also reported consistently lower application and success rates among women researchers.

The pattern is clear. Women who complete doctoral degrees in their mid-to-late twenties enter postdoctoral work at the same time as peak domestic responsibilities. Balancing grant cycles, publication pressure, travel, and childcare is not shared equally in academic households. Studies on dual-career faculty, including at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, show that women typically bear a greater share of domestic work regardless of professional status. The consequences are measurable: delayed publications, gaps in grant records, and reduced international visibility. Age relaxation, in this context, is a partial remedy for a documented structural disadvantage.

What the courts have suggested

The Supreme Court of India’s reasoning in Vijay Lakshmi vs Punjab University And Others (2003) is relevant here. Addressing preferential provisions for women in service matters, the Court drew a clear distinction between formal equality and substantive equality, which accounts for unequal outcomes.

It held that measures favouring women are constitutionally valid when they address demonstrated disadvantages. This logic applies to research grants as well: extending eligibility windows for women is not preferential treatment, but a corrective to structural disadvantage.

None of this implies that current policy is adequate. Age relaxation policies such as those under SERB address eligibility at the application stage but not the everyday conditions of research. A five-year extension to the upper age limit may allow women to apply for grants they would otherwise miss, but it does not provide childcare support during proposal writing, institutional support during maternity leave, or re-entry funding after career breaks.

There is also the question of who the policy excludes. A single father or a man caring for an ailing parent may also face significant career disruption, but the policy does not recognise him. This is not an argument to weaken protections for women, as evidence shows that caregiving burdens are not equal in Indian academia. Rather, it calls for an additional layer of support for documented caregiving responsibilities, while retaining and strengthening women-specific provisions that address the more widespread disadvantage.

What more considered policy would be

The National Education Policy 2020 gestures toward institutional flexibility and faculty wellbeing, but these commitments have not yet translated into binding research funding policy. That gap is overdue to be addressed. Funding agencies should consider no-cost grant extensions for documented caregiving periods, re-entry fellowships for women returning to research, and flexible milestone reporting for researchers with caregiving responsibilities. Several European research councils have implemented similar measures, showing that gender-neutral caregiving support, alongside gender-specific provisions, can improve equity without appearing arbitrary.

Gender-based age relaxation in Indian research grants is constitutionally grounded and empirically justified. The disadvantage it addresses is real, documented, and persistent. Removing it in the name of gender neutrality would be a policy error not supported by evidence. What is needed instead is a layered approach that retains support for women researchers while adding provisions for other caregivers. India’s research institutions owe their women scholars not just formal access to grants but the structural conditions in which a sustained research career is genuinely possible. Age relaxation is a beginning. It should not be mistaken for an ending

Nabeela Siddiqui is Assistant Professor, Vinayaka Mission’s Law School, Vinayaka Mission’s Research Foundation (Deemed University), Chennai