The history of women in leadership roles always speaks of struggle and hard work. Challenges surround her from her early childhood, but she is intelligent and sharp, her wit, charm, ambition and abilities to be influential have led her to be a leader. SiliconIndia organized the Women Leadership Summit for all ‘her’ achievements on 25 Feb 2011 across five cities in India at Pune, Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai and Chennai and on March 12th in Hyderabad. The event saw over 600 corporate delegates—mid and senior level women executives in each city come together to celebrate the great strides women are making in the business world.

Ascending the Corporate Ladder
Moving up is a challenge, either as a tech lead or biz lead. What does it take to make the cut? How to break through the barriers? Speakers shared their good times and not so good times, as they examined the formulas for success, and enlightened those who do not already know about the mountains they still have to climb.

Sujitha Karnad, Chief Transformation Officer, Tech Mahindra said, “Women are competent, qualified and are able to excel in several fields and have broken the myths of glass ceilings and walls. Women still give family high priority while making career decisions, but always come back with renewed energy to take on more responsibilities. Much has to be done to support women in the mid parts of their career to ensure that they reach higher echelons of management, and I think this will certainly happen with time.”

Sudha Gopalakrishnan, Sr. VP, Polaris Software) and Valsala Vijaykumar, Asst. GM, Canara Bank, shared their views on “Ascending the Corporate Ladder” at the Chennai event, and the qualities that women need to work on to enable ourselves in the level playing field at that level. While focusing on these attributes they explained how some of the inherent qualities help women in such positions and talked about the need for understanding and bridging the gap. They both echoed the thought in unison that at those levels it is more about how well the team does and no more a question of how capable an individual is.

“What makes women leaders distinctively different is that their (inherent) true self nature always keeps them centered in their being, thus bringing high levels of sensitivity and intuition, empathy and collaborative approach, in addition to the stereotype traits that a male leader brings to the workplace. Having said this, it is important to say that it is not a question of who is better. Male or female leaders are as adept, or as bad. It is always the man or woman in question,” said Ranjana Maitra, General Manager - Global Head Healthcare & Manufacturing BPO, Wipro at the Mumbai event.