14 Women in India's 70-Member Team at WorldSkills Shanghai 2026

Fourteen young women are representing Team India at WorldSkills Shanghai 2026, making up more than a fifth of the country's competitor contingent at the global skills championship.

The competition

The event is the 48th WorldSkills Competition and is being held in Shanghai from 22 to 27 September 2026. India has sent a 70-member squad of competitors, who are in the fray across 63 skills. WorldSkills is where young vocational professionals measure themselves against international benchmarks, and for many competitors it is the first time their training is judged by a global standard rather than a domestic one.

Where the women are competing

The women in the squad are spread across technical, specialised, creative and service-linked trades. Their skills include Chemical Laboratory Technology, Logistics and Freight Forwarding, Visual Merchandising, Fashion Technology, Retail Sales and Health and Social Care. Others are competing in Hotel Reception, Restaurant Service, Cooking, Painting and Decorating, Hairdressing, Beauty Therapy, Bakery, and Patisserie and Confectionery. The spread matters because several of these trades sit well outside the paths young women were traditionally pushed towards, and because a medal in any one of them travels back into a training institute at home as proof that the course can hold its own abroad.

Who they are

The competitors are Sampada Desai, Mehrunissa Begum, Anuja Ajay Vare, Vidhi Niravkumar Suthar, Saniya Joshi, Vishnupriya Sunil, Rashmeet Kaur Hanspal, Jhansirani Rout, Thanushree Magesh, Muskan, Jui Santosh Sapke, T. Sabir Sutar, Smriti Nambiar and Krishnanjali Sahoo.

What the ministry says

Manisha Sensarma, Official Delegate of WorldSkills India and Senior Economic Adviser in the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, called the participation a sign of an encouraging shift in Indian skilling and said the point it drives home is that skills have no gender. The ministry says it continues to push for greater participation by women in vocational education, apprenticeships and industry-linked training, and for wider occupational choice.