The civil list does not record gender. There is no column for it, and no Shri or Smt before the names. So every number in this part is an estimate, made from first names, and it describes groups, never any one officer. How the estimate was made, and how far to trust it, is at the end. The short version: about 4% of officers could not be placed, and the figures are good to about two percentage points either way.
One in five, and one in three of the newest
Of the officers who could be placed, about 21.6% are women: 25.5% of the direct recruits and 14.4% of the promotees.
Among direct recruits, the share was steady for a long time, and has risen in the last few years:
| Joined | Women among direct recruits |
|---|---|
| 1990–94 | 23% |
| 1995–99 | 26% |
| 2000–04 | 23% |
| 2005–09 | 20% |
| 2010–14 | 25% |
| 2015–19 | 27% |
| 2020–24 | 35% |
For about twenty-five years, women were a fifth to a quarter of each intake. Since 2020 they have been a third. The batches still to come confirm it. In DoPT’s service-allocation lists, which print the names of every candidate allotted to the IRS (Income Tax), women are 39% of the allocations from CSE 2020, 32% from CSE 2021, 34% from CSE 2022 and 34% from CSE 2024.
Among promotees, the share is lower and moves with each round: 18% of those promoted between 2022 and 2024.
At every rank
| Rank | Direct recruits | Promotees | All officers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chairman and Members | 1 of 5 | — | 1 of 5 |
| Pr. CCIT | 9 of 24 (38%) | — | 38% |
| CCIT | 27% | — | 27% |
| Pr. CIT | 24% | — | 24% |
| CIT | 23% | 7% | 22% |
| Addl./JCIT | 23% | 16% | 21% |
| ACIT/DCIT | 28% | 14% | 20% |
| 76th and 77th batches | 35% | — | 35% |
| All ranks | 25.5% | 14.4% | 21.6% |
Pr. CIT and above are not marked direct recruit or promotee in the civil list; all their civil codes follow the direct-recruit pattern, so they are counted as direct recruits.
Among direct recruits, the share of women is about the same at the top as lower down. The senior ranks come from the batches of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which were about a quarter women, and the share of women at those ranks today is about a quarter too.
Women rise as far as the men of their batch. Promotions in the service follow laid-down rules of seniority and qualifying service, so this is what one would expect, and the civil list bears it out. In the batches that joined between 1989 and 1995, almost everyone still serving has reached Pr. CIT or above: 92% to 100% of the women and 90% to 96% of the men.
Younger, and differently educated
Women join younger. Direct-recruit women joined at 27.1 on average, men at 28.0. As Part 3 showed, age at joining decides how far up an officer can go before 60. Because women join younger, more of them, in proportion, can expect to reach the top grades. The share of women at the top should rise over the next two decades by a little more than their share of the intake.
Women are younger now. More than half of the direct-recruit women (53%) are under 40, against 42% of the men.
They studied different things. Among direct recruits who joined since 2015, 53% of the women are engineers against 66% of the men, and 20% studied arts and humanities against 10% of the men.
What it means
A third of the officers joining now are women, most of them in their twenties and thirties. Within a decade, a large part of the field grade will be women in the years of marriage, children and ageing parents. Maternity and child-care leave will be a regular feature of the field, and so will couples in the service who need to be posted where both can work. None of this is new to any organisation that hires young women. What is new is the scale.
The leadership pipeline is sound. Women of the same batch reach the same grades as men, and because they join younger, the top of the service will hold more women in the years ahead, not fewer.
The promotee door brings fewer women. About one promotee in six is a woman, against one direct recruit in three. Part of that reflects the cadres promotees come from, Income Tax Officers and Inspectors, which the civil list does not cover. Part of it, as anyone in the department will have seen, is that many officers turn the promotion down. Promotion to Assistant Commissioner comes in the last decade of service, often with a transfer out of the home station, at the age when family responsibilities weigh most: children in their final years of school or in college, parents who need care. It brings new responsibility, and a round of training at an age when few look forward to it. These weigh on everyone, and on women, who still carry more of the care at home, perhaps most of all. The civil list cannot count those who said no, but they are part of why the door is narrow.
The service does not count this itself. That the share of women in the service has to be estimated from first names is a finding in its own right.
What could change
- Record gender in the civil list and in the service’s own data. It is a basic fact about a workforce, and planning for leave, postings and facilities needs it.
- Plan for leave instead of absorbing it. With a third of new officers women, maternity and child-care leave are predictable. Charges could have planned cover, so that a leave does not leave a charge without an officer or add to a colleague’s charge without notice.
- Make couple and spouse postings a matter of policy, not of request. The guidelines exist; the question is how consistently they are applied, especially for couples who are both officers of the service.
- Equip the field for the officers in it. Searches and surveys at night, travel to remote charges, and the facilities in office buildings, from rest rooms to crèches, need to be planned for a field in which one officer in three is a woman.
- Make the promotion worth accepting. Promotion from ITO to Assistant Commissioner could come with a choice of station, or a first posting near home, for officers with family responsibilities; training designed for experienced officers rather than for new ones; and a clear picture of the postings that follow. Addressing the reasons officers decline it would bring more of them, and more women among them, into the IRS. Counting how many decline, and why, would be a start.
About the data
Sources. The Civil List 2024 of the Indian Revenue Service (Income Tax), as on 1 July 2024. For the batches after it, DoPT’s service-allocation lists for CSE 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2024, which print the name of every candidate allotted to the IRS (Income Tax).
How gender was estimated.
- I read all 2,414 distinct first names in the civil list and sorted them into female, male, and names used by both. For the allocation lists, I read the new names the same way.
- Names used by both were settled where the rest of the name settles them: Kaur, Kumari, Devi or Begum mean a woman, and Kumar or a male middle name such as Lal or Prasad means a man.
- Surnames written first, as in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, were skipped.
- 194 officers in the civil list (4.4%) could not be placed. 83 of them are initials and a surname only; the rest carry a name used by both sexes and nothing else to go on (Kiran, Jyoti, Suman, Tshering, and many Punjabi names ending in -preet). Most of the unplaced officers are promotees, so the promotee figures are the least certain.
- Percentages are of the officers who could be placed. Expect an error of about two percentage points either way.
- The method can only sort people into two groups. It describes groups, never any one officer.
Limits.
- The civil list shows only officers serving on 1 July 2024. For batches that joined before 2000, the share of women describes those still in service, not the whole batch. The 1985–89 batches, with 40 officers left, are not shown.
- The comparison of how far women and men rise covers the batches whose officers have mostly reached Pr. CIT already. For later batches, promotion depends on vacancies still to come.
- Groups of a few dozen officers move by several points with one or two officers either way.
Next: what we learn after joining.
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