Union Consumer Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi on Monday, 25 May 2026 highlighted a sharp rise in women's patent filings and STEM participation in India, crediting the gains to the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and attributing the momentum to sustained policy focus on women's empowerment.

Context

In his post on X, Joshi stated that annual patent filings by women in India have crossed 5,000 per year, up from fewer than 100 annually in an earlier period. He also cited that women now constitute nearly 43% of STEM enrolments in the country — a figure he described as higher than the global average. The minister, who is a father of three daughters, wrote: 'I feel especially proud seeing our daughters excel and achieve new milestones. Every achievement by our girls fills me with immense pride and happiness.'

Joshi invoked the hashtags #WomenEmpowerment and #NariShakti, framing the data points as evidence of a broader national transformation under the Modi government.

Policy Backdrop

The gains cited by Joshi align with a series of central government initiatives launched over the past decade. The Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme, rolled out in 2015, targeted improvements in the child sex ratio and promoted girls' access to education across districts. The Startup India initiative, launched in 2016, simplified patent filing procedures and offered fee concessions for women inventors, directly lowering barriers to intellectual property registration.

The Indian Patent Office has, over successive years, introduced gender-disaggregated reporting and reduced official fees for women applicants as part of broader efforts to close the innovation gender gap. Scholarship programmes and institutional support mechanisms have run in parallel to raise female participation in higher education, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Stakeholders and Impact

The primary beneficiaries of the trend highlighted by Joshi are women in STEM fields and female entrepreneurs seeking to protect intellectual property. A sustained rise in patent filings signals not only greater participation but also growing confidence among women innovators to commercialise and safeguard their work through formal legal channels.

India's 43% female STEM enrolment rate, if sustained, positions the country favourably against global benchmarks at a time when several advanced economies continue to grapple with significant gender gaps in technical disciplines. Policymakers and academic institutions are likely to cite such figures in ongoing debates over funding allocation for women-centric STEM programmes.

What's Next

The next annual report of the Indian Patent Office and the All India Survey on Higher Education will be closely watched for updated, independently verified gender-disaggregated data on both patent filings and STEM enrolments. These reports will either corroborate or contextualise the figures cited by Joshi. With Nari Shakti remaining a central plank of the ruling dispensation's political messaging, further policy announcements targeting women in innovation and entrepreneurship are expected in the months ahead.