Nasscom’s IT Women Leadership Summit 2007 held at the Leela Palace, Bangalore on December 12th & 13th, 2007 was a neat ensemble of the who’s who of top ladies from the corporate corridors of Indian technology companies with a sprinkling of male honchos speaking on the need for gender inclusivity. However pray where are the men who ought to have been the greater proportion of listeners so that they could be effectively sensitized on gender parity issues?

This principal barb aside, the Summit deserves the bouquets for bringing together enlightened panelists who hail from all walks of corporate IT India to speak on issues relevant to the present day working woman. The audience too was at its participative best throwing a volley of questions to the speakers, which were answered with aplomb.

The opening session on ‘Crossing the Gender Barrier’ saw Vinita Bali, Managing Director of Britannia Industries speaking about the need to tap the talent reservoir in women. Tap into your inner reservoirs of strength and creativity to succeed, was the message of the following session on ‘Women as Entrepreneurs’.

Hema Ravichandar an independent HR Advisor had a message for everybody: “Diversity is a situation, whereas inclusivity is in the mind.” Further elaborating that it (success) all boils down to the state of a person’s mind she said, “Courage allows successful women to fail and then perhaps she may not have failed to begin with.”

Statistics too are on the positive note, with Neelam Dhawan, Managing Director, Microsoft India pointing out that 35 percent of students graduating from professional colleges in India in 2010 will be women. Dhawan took a few steps ahead and made a profound statement on market dynamics: “If a company has to create products or intellectual property it needs diversity in its workforce to understand the market.”