Breaking barriers: How companies are empowering women to rise in the workforce

This is an even bigger challenge in a country like India that is known for its low female labour force participation rate. Various reports and surveys have time and again highlighted this paradox in India and much of South Asia where despite accounting for half the population, women largely tend to stay out of the workforce and even fewer find representation at the middle- and top management levels.

This was also highlighted by a recent study by think tank National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER). It found that while there has been some increase in women in top management roles, India still lags the global average.

Women in top management roles have increased from nearly 14% in FY14 to about 22% in FY23, noted the paper titled ‘Female Leadership in Corporate India: Firm Performance and Culture’. It, however, found that India still lags in the share of women in middle- and senior management roles at only 20%, compared to nearly 33% for the world (as of 2019). “Almost 60% of the firms studied did not have any women in top management teams as of March 2023,” the study says.

It also found that the mandate was not replicated in top management teams (C-suites). More than half of the NSE-listed firms in the sample didn’t have even one woman in their top management teams, and about 10% of firms had just one woman. 

CHALLENGES GALORE 

Experts highlight that this paucity of women’s representation in the workforce starts at the entry or junior level and gets exacerbated at the mid-level, when women often leave work because of reasons ranging from marriage and childbirth and child-rearing to caring for the elderly.

A recent report by the World Bank noted that while education outcomes for women have significantly improved in South Asia, the “marriage penalty” plays a big role in keeping women out of the workforce. “On average, post-marriage South Asian female employment rates drop by 12 percentage points, about one-third of the female pre-marital employment rate—even in the absence of children,” said the report. While the estimated drop was 12 percentage points for women in India, it increased by 13 percentage points for men.

Nivruti Rai, Managing Director and CEO of national investment promotion and facilitation agency Invest India, terms this situation as a “leaky pipeline” and notes that women tend to leave jobs in situations such as marriage, childbirth and childcare, to take care of ageing in-laws and parents, as well as on the transfer of their spouses to other cities.

Rituparna Chakraborty, Co-founder of staffing firm TeamLease and an independent director on the boards of several companies, lists out various constraints for women workers—including infrastructure, safety and transportation—that can impact mobility and willingness to move out of homes to work. “Further, our entire support system for working women who want to or already have children is broken. Nuclear families are more prevalent and crèches and childcare are few and far between,” she says.

Global professional services firm Aon, in its ‘2024 Voice of Women Study India’ summed up these challenges and revealed that 42% of the women surveyed mentioned facing bias or potential bias at work, while 37% revealed that they have experienced insensitive behaviour. In addition, 6% of the women (more than 1,400) in the survey responded that they had faced sexual harassment at least once, yet less than half officially reported the incident to their employer.

“Working mothers had their own challenges, with 75% responding that they faced a career setback of one to two years after maternity leave and close to 40% said going on maternity leave had a negative impact on pay and their role changed to something they did not prefer,” said the survey.

It also found that there is increasing bias as women progress in their careers as 34% of those in senior management and leadership roles indicated facing discrimination compared to 17% of those in entry level roles. The survey covered 24,000 professional women across 560 companies, to identify their most pressing workplace challenges.

As Business Today celebrates the 21st edition of the Most Powerful Women in Business (MPW), highlighting the lives of women leaders who have made a difference across organisations between September 2023 and September 2024, it is all the more crucial and serves as an inspiration to other women who have just begun their professional journeys.   

DRIVING CHANGE

However, experts and industry leaders believe that there are some winds of change and the government, organisations as well as individuals are working to change these biases and perceptions and effect a real change on the ground, be it in terms of assignments and roles, pay and rewards or infrastructure.

Anjali Raghuvanshi, Chief People Officer and Senior Director-Business Innovation at talent company Randstad India, says that there has been greater participation of women in corporate India. “At the mid-level and above, roles are becoming more gender neutral. There may be some perceptions still at the entry level but less and less people now believe that, say, an HR role or an executive assistant role has to go to a woman. Women are also opting for more business-facing roles. That’s a welcome change,” she highlights.

While laws are already in place to prevent gender discrimination in employment or wages, organisations are also now working to not only encourage but also incentivise and retain women employees as they realise that supporting a woman employee works to their advantage. “If an organisation stands with a woman employee in the time of her need, she will stay with them for a longer run and give more in return,” underlines Raghuvanshi.

This is not all. The NCAER study also found positive correlations between having women in leadership positions and the firm’s culture. “We find that having at least one woman on [the] board is associated with higher economic performance, financial stability, and lower financial risk for the larger firms. We observe that although all firms see some impact on financial performance after hiring at least one woman following the mandate, mid-cap and large-cap firms see a more consistent impact for a longer period post-mandate,” said the study.

It also found that a higher share of women in board positions is positively associated with employee ratings and sentiment scores, but the relationship is significant only when there is at least one woman in a top management (C-suite) position.

Organisations are now offering options such as remote working and flexible hours for women employees who can use it to manage their personal and family responsibilities while remaining dedicated workers. They are also looking at longer paternity breaks that enable men to take care of their children and give women a chance to return to the workforce earlier rather than going on an extended maternity break. Crèches, daycare, nursing rooms and transport service are other facilities being offered to women workers.

“There is a wide scope of things that employers can do such as nudge them to reskill or add more skills, sponsor them for workshops to give them more confidence,” says Chakraborty of TeamLease.

Women leaders profiled in this issue believe that right from their childhood, their family remained a source of support, giving them the same opportunities that were given to the boys in the family, and this has translated into their spouses and children also treating them no differently and understanding that chores related to the household have to be done by all. Most of them are now paying it forward by ensuring that their organisations are equitable and inclusive in their approach when dealing with women employees.

But a common sentiment echoed by most experts is that women, too, have to undergo a mindset change and have greater self-confidence as well as the belief that they can continue to work, whatever be the challenges. “Women are also more inhibited and can lack confidence in the workplace,” says Chakraborty, adding that they also need to have the mindset that not working is not an option for them. “For men, it is a given that they will get a job and a regular income. But women have the option to stop working and tend to the household. Women have to move out of this thinking,” she says.

Raghuvanshi of Randstad India also agrees that women need to have more courage and have to work harder to be more organised and disciplined. “If women get that right in their head that there is always a way, then they will be able to manage the (maternity or career) break time better and not take longer breaks that can make them redundant at the workplace. It is a mindset shift to come back to the workplace with shorter gaps of a year of six months,” she highlights.

It may not have been an easy journey to the top for the women on this year’s MPW list. Each of them has tackled challenges head on and has highlighted their fighting spirit as a key attribute that did not let them feel defeated or let down, no matter how insurmountable the difficulty may have been. Each of them is a glorious example and a reminder of the joys and the rewards that the path less taken can lead to.  

@surabhi_prasad