ABSTRACT
For accessing, participating, and completing higher education, various socio-economic, gender, regional, and cultural aspects interplay. Often a combination of these factors presents complex and unique challenges even post access. This chapter presents the structural marginalisation of transgender students pursuing higher education in India. Beginning with a brief chronological context and questions, attempts have been made to explain their current positioning in general, and their inclusion in higher education institutions (HEIs). There is a policy-level analysis of all the legislations in India pertaining to the higher education of transgender people considering their difference. Further, the results of an empirical study are utilised to highlight the prevailing structural marginalisation of transgender students in higher educational institutions. Life histories of three transgender students (male to female) have brought forth the aspects of structural marginalisation. Infrastructural and administrative procedural aspects such as access to toilets, gender transition, and marginalisation and the absence of documentation procedures to record the change of name and gender emerge as various examples of structural marginalisation. Institutional reforms such as financial aid, hostel facilities, unisex toilets, awareness programmes, support groups, provisions for name, and gender change in documentation have been arrived at by drawing insights from these experiential accounts. In this context, the role of HEIs’ anti-harassment cells, students’ welfare department, ST/SC/OBC cells, and student bodies becomes pertinent.
