Gender imbalance highest in Indian IT sector
By siliconindia   |   Tuesday, 09 June 2009, 15:05 IST   |    2 Comments
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Gender imbalance highest in Indian IT sector
Bangalore: The women workforce in the Indian IT sector is significantly lesser than many of its Asian counterparts. Only 25.2 percent of Indian women belong to the total IT workforce compared to 40 percent in China and Singapore and 33.8 percent in Japan, says a survey by Working Mother Media. According to NASSCOM, the total number of women in the Indian IT workforce is 6,70,984 in 2008. The report titled 'Gender diversity in Asia' also says that there are fewer women occupying the senior level posts in India compared to the other countries in Asia-Pacific. China with 13 percent and Singapore with 13.3 percent is comparatively higher than India, where only 8.2 percent of the women hold the top positions. Jessie Paul, Chief Marketing Officer, Wipro says, "Women opt out from senior management level positions mainly due to family pressures." According to Jessie, the number of women who directly report to the chief executive is only 3-4 percent. Recently, while speaking at a meeting on 'Women in Corporate Governance' Pamela Parizek, Partner, Forensic Advisory Services of KPMG said that only five percent of directors on boards of 1,500 Indian companies surveyed are women and only 26 percent of these companies have women directors. The study also included interviews of 21 successful women leaders in the region, which showed different trends among them. According to the report, most women had a good number of extra curricular activities and networking platforms. They were hard working and had strong family support. These women were also ready to take risk and were mostly team players managing people. There was also a lot of difference found by the report, between the working condition in multinational and local companies. To bring about a balance in the workforce, women need to take new approach to collaboration and networking, suggests Rohini Anand, senior Vice President, Sodexo. According to Rohini, women don't take a lot of risks like men, which can actually help in avoiding excessive risks that led to the present economic slowdown. But, thanks to recession, the sex ratio in the U.S. workforce underwent some changes. Carol Evans, President, Working Mother Media magazine said, "It was mostly men who lost their jobs, which saw women becoming nearly 50 percent of the workforce. Many companies are now training and having initiatives for this new workforce." But, recession or boom, India is still struggling to strike the gender balance in its IT workforce.

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