Why Women Always Not On Top In Corporate India?

While women continue to make up a small percentage of the senior leadership in organizations globally, Indian companies are doing even worse in terms of advancing female professionals to top leadership roles, as per an unreleased report by a global HR consulting firm. 

    
Women leaders hold only 5% or at times even less of the top 100 senior roles in half of the Indian companies surveyed by Mercer, only 11% organizations say they have more than 30% women in the top deck. On a positive note, the report which was shared exclusively with TOI, also pointed out that 64% of Indian firms say they have no barriers preventing women from advancing to senior roles. 
    
Among those who acknowledged barriers to female advancement, only 3% say bias on the part of the managers (compared to 15% of organizations in the Asia-Pacific region) was a reason for womens’ low representation at the top. On the other hand, 19% of organizations in India see managers’ unwillingness to take a risk on a non-traditional candidate as a major barrier for the development of women into senior leaders. Of late, Indian organizations have seen a massive drive to push for gender diversity with a focus on inducting more women in critical roles and on company boards. In fact, the stress is so much that CEOs and top leaders are being held accountable for promoting and mentoring female talent. 
    
Around 14% of companies blamed women’s leadership styles and their unwillingness to promote themselves as one of the causes for their stagnation in the company hierarchy. Other reasons which emerged as a barrier for women were their exclusion from informal networks, lack of visibility to senior leaders and an insufficient investment in women leaders. “India continues to be way behind even when compared to the rest of Asia and numbers dip further when we consider only the boardrooms. While the issue has been long established, what remains to be seen is a discernible impact of all the gender inclusivity initiatives and policies on the ground,” says Nishchae Suri, MD, Mercer India. 
    
But executive search firms say the change is being seen largely in the pipeline of potential CEOs which is strengthening gradually. “Today, a global engineering major asked us to get a woman CEO for their India centre. These are new sectors opening up to women. So attitudes are changing. Judging women by the number of hours that they spend at work, that is an incorrect barometer and that’s where companies go wrong,” says R Suresh, CEO, Stanton Chase, an executive search firm. British telecoms major Vodafone India started an executive committee level mentorship programme for high potential women in the middle management to propel them to the top spot. 

Additionally it is mandatory for everyone in the senior leadership teams to have one female among their direct reports, what the telco calls the Plus One Target programme. IT firm Mahindra Satyam kicked off a programme “Starting Over” last year aimed at getting senior women associates who are between 35 and 40 years back to work. “We continue to engage in these programmes but things have not altered dramatically. We also recruit from the outside at senior roles with the aim of having at least 10% women in leadership roles,” says Hari T, Mahindra Satyam's chief people officer. The IT firm has around 6-7% women in toptier roles presently.