Indian women are slowly climbing up the IT ladder in India. At present they rival their American counterparts in percentages relating to the number of women working in the IT industry in their respective countries.

Women in India across all industries make up 31 percent of the workforce, according to Government of India statistics. The Indian IT body National Association of Software and Services Companies predicts, the male-female ratio specifically in information technology jobs to be 65 men to 35 women by the year 2005.

Take the case of Wipro Technologies. The company saw the ratio of women workers (excluding BPO) rise to 21.22 percent as on April 2005, compared to 18.75 percent as on April 2004.

Lack of mobility is cited as one of the major constraints among women to participate in the Indian IT work force. If women want to work in the IT sector, they should be open to relocation. As a result, the current IT employment opportunities in large cities like Hyderabad or Mumbai are often not appealing or feasible for many women, particularly those from the distant Northern states.

In contrast to the Indian scenario, a recent study by the Information Technology Association of America revealed that the percentage of women in the U.S. IT workforce has declined by 18.5 percent since 1996, from a high of 41 percent in 1996 and 32.4 percent in 2004.

The declining representation of women is largely due to the fact that one out of every three women in the IT workforce in the U.S. falls into administrative job categories that have experienced significant overall declines in recent years. Hence Indian women show the way, in the IT play.