Gender imbalance at work place is a sensitive issue that not many corporate bigwigs like to touch upon. More often than not, it’s ignored. But in the last few years one can see glimmerings of change in the corporate boardrooms where an effort is being made to bring women to the forefront. So when Cyrus Mistry, the new chairperson of Tata Sons, a part of Tata Group, talked about bringing more women into the work force, he got justified media attention.
“While all of us hunger for faster economic growth, are we giving adequate thought to the subject of appropriate representation of women in the corporate world?,” Mistry told The Hindustan Times, an Indian daily, in an interview. He raised a pertinent question that can no longer be brushed under the carpet.
India’s share of women in the work force is abysmally low. Even when it has the world’s largest work force at 478 million people, the proportion of women is only 24%. A paper, ‘India’s Economy: The Other Half’, published in 2012 by the US-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, stated that the number of senior-level female employees is 5% compared with the global average of about 20%.
In recent years, a few women have broken the proverbial glass ceiling, especially in banking. India’s second largest bank, ICICI Bank, is headed by Chanda Kochhar; India’s third largest private bank, Axis Bank, is headed by Shikha Sharma; Renu Sud Karnad is the Managing Director at HDFC Ltd; Meera Sanyal is the Country Executive at Royal Bank of Scotland; Naina Lal Kidwai is Group General Manager and Country Head of HSBC India and Manisha Girotra is the Managing Director of Union Bank of Switzerland’s India operations.
Then there are others like Seema Modi, MD of the Indian division of Heinz; Nisa and Tanya Godrej, who hold important positions in the Godrej Group; Neelam Dhawan, MD, HP India Pvt Ltd and Rupa Kudwa, MD and CEO, CRISIL. But such examples are few and far between.
By focussing on correcting the gender imbalance, Mistry has opened up doors for change to take place. In the annual report of Tata Global Beverages Ltd, he stated that “when women are insufficiently represented in the workplace, we lose out on 50% of the talent pool.” He does realise the shortcoming as well as the hurdle that this imbalance poses to India’s ambitions of becoming a superpower. Let’s take a simple comparison. China’s economy at 9.3 % surpassed India’s 6.9 % in 2011, as per a World Bank report and one of the important reasons for this performance gap was the active participation of women in China’s work force.
Now, with Indian corporates waking up to this reality, things are bound to change. The Gender Initiative, launched by Computer Science Corporative (CSC) India, is one of the many efforts that are being made to promote gender diversity at work place. It aims to retain and attract female employees with the promise of a healthy work environment. A helpline at CSC called ‘Helpline@Planet W’ supports communication between women employees and council members.
While more such initiatives are required to correct the imbalance, the move is laudable. At long last, winds of change are blowing through the corridors of the Indian corporate world.
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