Women leaders: We are yet to see more of them
By Kukil Bora, SiliconIndia   |   Wednesday, 10 November 2010, 12:48 IST
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Women leaders: We are yet to see more of them
Bangalore: Truly speaking, the days when we hardly find a woman in the top managerial position in an organization are gone. Today, the women population in the leading positions across the organizations is increasing. Women leaders like Sonia Gandhi, Indra Nooyi, CEO, Pepsico, Naina Lal Kidwai, MD, HSBC India, Lalita Gupte, COO, ICICI, Chanda Kocchar, MD, ICICI Bank and Pragya Raman, Group Executive President of Aditya Birla Group are some those who have taken on the entire world. Despite all these feel-good news, the question still remains - Have the barriers to women's growth been broken? And if you want an answer favouring women, you can't say "yes" straight away. It is good to know that bringing gender diversity into their senior management and decision making structures has become a serious concern for the Indian business organizations and even multi-national companies who have a substantial presence in India. The Human Resource departments of some of the leading Indian companies have been directed to look for talented women in order to fill their senior management slots. Yes, there are positive developments in terms of women's participation in leadership activities, but the so-called patriarchal society is not yet completely vanished. The statistics are not on the side of the weaker sex. The number of women leaders of large companies and women-politicians in the government or non-government structure still does not match with that of men. According to a recent study, only 26.1 percent of the listed companies (392 of 1,500 firms) have a woman on their boards. Out of the 278 directors on the BSE Sensex companies, there are only 10 women directors. As ranked by Fortune, over 77 percent of the 200 largest companies in the world had at least one women director on their board as of 2006. But when we come to India, there are only 36 percent of women who are holding senior management positions. According to the Corporate Gender Gap report brought out by the World Economic Forum, has the lowest percentage of women employees (23 percent), followed by Japan (24 percent), Turkey (26 percent) and Austria (29 percent). Although the ratio of women employees has seen an increase in India's top IT companies like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys and Wipro Technologies, very few of them have made it to the boardroom. In Infosys, nearly 40 percent of the entry-level workforce in Infosys is constituted by women. While around 13 percent women constitute the middle management workforce, about eight percent constitute the top management levels. India has its own history of being ruled by a women leader. Indira Gandhi, the first woman ever to lead a democratic power, ruled India for a total of 14 years being elected and re-elected due to her tenacious and headstrong approach to politics and national matters. Even now the two leading positions in the Indian politics are being occupied by women - Pratibha Patil, the current President of India and Sonia Gandhi, the UPA Chairperson. But how often it has happened? These are the major three examples of modern Indian women in true leadership roles and making a change. In the U.S., today woman take each fourth place in top management of large companies, as per the data of the American Bureau of labor statistics. Nearly 10.4 million U.S. companies are female-owned, and women are starting businesses twice as fast as men. In addition, as much as $1.9 trillion in annual sales is generated by these women-owned businesses. Whether it is Nikki Haley of Republican Party who scripted history by winning the Governorship of South Carolina or the Indian-American Kamala Harris, who won the election for Attorney General of California, women in the U.S. are holding key leadership positions which is unfortunately not happening in India, a fact that doesn't go well with the tag of being the largest democracy in the world. What are the reasons? There are factors that hamper women's growth within an organization. To start with, it is the work-life balance challenges that impact women's advancement. Moreover, higher roles ask for higher commitments, which may be difficult for women without interference from family responsibilities. In India, a wide gap still remains between the number of men and women at the top leadership positions in various governmental and non-governmental organizations. A much more conscious approach is required from all of these in respect to their social responsibility to promote gender diversity. It is true that the obstacles barring women from playing leadership roles no longer applies to most workplaces. The change is underway, albeit slowly.

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