Women are entering several less-ventured spaces today. But with dwindling female labour force participation and a 37.5 per cent gender gap, Asia’s third-largest economy has miles to go before gender equality even appears in sight
Please rotate your device
We don't support landscape mode yet. Please go back to portrait mode for the best experience
The year 2021 has been witness to Soma Mondal taking the reins at the Rs 70,000-crore steel PSU SAIL as its first woman chairman, Falguni Nayar ringing the NSE bell as she steered her decade-old start-up to a Rs 5,000-crore-plus IPO, and Ola Electric announcing a 10,000-strong all-women workforce for its two-wheeler factory near Chennai. All good tidings.
That these are significant moments even in 2021, however, says a lot about the state of affairs for working women in India. Asia’s third-largest economy has one of the lowest rates of female labour participation in the world at 21 per cent. Smaller and less developed neighbours Bangladesh (30.5 per cent) and Sri Lanka (33.7 per cent) fare much better. Worse, India’s performance has declined over the past decade. A widened gender gap of 37.5 per cent has accorded the country an ignominious 140th rank out of 156 countries in the WEF Global Gender Gap Report 2021. And the pandemic has made matters worse as more women than men lost their jobs.
Even in executive positions, start-ups and manufacturing—the three areas which brought in some cause for cheer—there’s a long road ahead in drawing more women in. Take the case of women leaders in corporate India. Only 8.9 per cent of firms in India have women as top managers, according to the WEF report. Says auto components maker NRB Bearings’ Vice Chairman and MD Harshbeena Zaveri, “In India, women go missing between entry and middle levels. When you can hold them in the middle level, slowly they do tend to come up to the senior levels as seen in the banking and finance sector.” She says it is likely to worsen because the pandemic’s burden has been higher on women. “It has become quite obvious that at home, irrespective of their professional standing, women are the ones taking responsibility for household duties.”
In India, women go missing between entry and middle levels. When you can hold them in the middle level, slowly they do tend to come up to the senior levels as seen in the banking and finance sector.
Harshbeena Zaveri
Vice Chairman and MD
NRB Bearings
Empathy, a collaborative spirit, better conflict resolution, diversity of thought and a host of other superior soft skills are what women leaders bring to the table, which have become all the more important after the pandemic. Germany, New Zealand, Taiwan and Iceland stand testimony—all women-led nations lauded for their Covid crisis management.
Global executive search firm EMA Partners’ Managing Director K. Sudarshan says companies, too, realise they need to include more women. “They are offering a route back into corporate roles.” According to a 2021 Working Mother and Avtar Best Companies for Women in India study, women in corporate leadership in IT/ITeS, FMCG and manufacturing has increased over the previous year, whereas it has dipped in BFSI and pharma. “In the past 10 years, especially in the past three years, it has been heartening to see large organisations put money into diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiatives. Smaller firms are yet to realise the benefits accrued to them through these measures. It’s a good beginning but has been limited to certain sectors like IT and banking,” says Founder and President Saundarya Rajesh of D&I consulting firm Avtar Group.
In the past 10 years, especially in the past three years, it has been heartening to see large organisations put money into diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiatives. Smaller firms are yet to realise the benefits accrued to them through these measures. It’s a good beginning but has been limited to certain sectors like IT and banking.
Saundarya Rajesh
Founder and President
Avtar Group
“But increasing women’s participation in leadership roles is also a function of supply. How many women are enrolling in MBAs? Only when they come through the ranks will you find them at the top. That’s a bigger challenge,” says Sudarshan, who is also Regional Managing Partner–Asia, adding that women do drop off at the middle management level.
The BT-MDRA B-school Ranking 2021 shows that the number of women candidates in the top 25 B-schools has been rising for the past six financial years. And Zaveri doesn’t agree there is a shortage of competent women in the country for senior positions. “Headhunters ask me if I mind having a woman candidate,” she says, adding that extended maternity leaves only hurt the women. Instead, companies should insist on interviewing at least two women candidates for every 10 they consider for senior positions. “We should fill company boards with 50 per cent women, why just one woman? We should fill CXO positions with 30-50 per cent women.” In the NRB Bearings boardroom, she says, the principle is to have women in three of the most important roles. Either the chairman of the NRC or the Audit committee, and the company secretary if not the CFO. She herself is Vice Chairman and MD.
The new-age world of start-ups is no different either for women. SUGAR Cosmetics CEO and Co-founder Vineeta Singh and women-focussed Saha Fund Founder and CEO Ankita Vashistha quote anaemic figures of less than 5 per cent women’s representation both among funded founders and investors. This has led to a funding crisis for women’s businesses. “Women founders tend to solve for women’s pain points and most VCs invest in businesses they can relate to. We need to have more women in decision-making roles of VC funds,” says Singh. The opportunity cost is also that an entire segment of female technology or FemTech products and services get left out.
Most investors are now vocal about inclusivity. That’s a really good thing but it hasn’t resulted in enough capital going to women. For it to be meaningful, 30-40 per cent women-run businesses have to be funded. That’s going to take another 10 years because while the bias is not vocalised, there might still be some in their heads.
Vineeta Singh
CEO and Co-Founder
SUGAR Cosmetics
The women bring in so many other benefits, too—Vashistha has observed leaner business models, a 35 per cent higher return on investment compared to men-founded businesses, and more inclusive teams with better work cultures. “Women founders hire three times more women than male co-founders. When you have a woman at the top, you know the culture will be more inclusive. So, it all changes.”
But small shifts are underway, both agree. Now there are communities like TiE Women, angel groups and accelerators for women founders to connect with peers. Singh says when she started out more than a decade ago, it was common for VCs to ask her questions that they would never ask her male counterparts—what are your personal life plans, how will you treat your business once you have a family, when will your co-founder join full time. She says she hasn’t faced such questions in the subsequent four rounds of funding SUGAR has raised. “Most investors are now vocal about inclusivity. That’s a really good thing but it hasn’t resulted in enough capital going to women. For it to be meaningful, 30-40 per cent women-run businesses have to be funded. That’s going to take another 10 years because while the bias is not vocalised, there might still be some in their heads,” says Singh.
The slower way ahead is to have more women in decision-making roles of VC funds. The faster way would be to make more capital available to them through debt funds, credit lines and schemes around women entrepreneurs, she adds. Other than a few funds like Vashistha’s, there are no other diversity-focussed institutional capital funds in India.
That’s where India has to catch up with the US, where top firms like Visa, PayPal, Salesforce and others also allocate funds for diversity, says Vashistha. The Black Lives Matter movement has certainly helped. “So many funds have come up in the last year for people of colour and there is so much money available in the market there.”
Women are no strangers to factories. Images of them churning out clothes from behind unending rows of sewing machines are commonplace. Again, they account for a measly 12 per cent of the country’s industrial workforce, according to a survey by Avtar and GE. But they are making their way to the shop floors of automobile, electronics and mining companies these days as firms are waking up to their potential.
“In our Pantnagar factory, where 85 per cent of the workforce is women, the productivity and agility women bring to the work is so much higher. As management, we obviously see a business case for employing more women in the factories,” says Priya Mathilakath Pillai, Head-HR, Retail and Corporate, Titan Company. The firm has had an all-women factory at Hosur for around 35 years, and a sizeable women workforce at its Coimbatore factory as well.
Their precision, dexterity, ability to sit in one place for hours on end, work ethic, loyalty and lower attrition rates make them an attractive talent pool for companies making small parts or goods. “We work with one of the largest mobile handset manufacturing plants in India. And the company wants us to hire 70-80 per cent female employees,” says Manpower Senior Director of Sales and Global Accounts Alok Kumar. The staffing and recruitment firm adds that the absolute numbers are in thousands.
Even arduous industries such as mining, which involves operating heavy machinery, handling scorching metals and working in high temperature zones, are recruiting women factory workers. Vedanta Group CHRO Madhu Srivastava says women took on the roles enthusiastically even when concerned male line managers were sceptical about assigning physically demanding roles to them. The mining giant, which employs 2,100 women among its 16,970 workers in mining, crane operation and other factory roles across its group companies, has appointed female security guards at factories, and designed workwear and PPE suited for a woman’s physiology.
“If you want to attract women into manufacturing, giving them a 360-degree support system is extremely important,” says Pillai. Titan meets with the women workers’ families to allay their safety concerns, offers monetary incentives, has set up a school within the Hosur township for their children, runs cultural clubs to bring the women together beyond work and holds sensitisation sessions for managers and supervisors. Both Titan and Vedanta are considering opening up more factory roles for remote work through the use of technology and automation.
In our Pantnagar factory, where 85 per cent of the workforce is women, the productivity and agility women bring to the work is so much higher. As management, we obviously see a business case for employing more women in the factories.
Priya Mathikalath Pillai
Head-HR, Retail and Corporate
Titan Company
While companies set their targets on improving diversity in their workforce, powerful impact trickles down from the top. Firms benefit from hiring women in junior roles because these are the women that need the jobs and are less vocal, says Zaveri. “But if you have more women in senior positions, you will create a more women-friendly company from the bottom up. All the IT companies have so many women, but their senior leadership, except the HR head, never has any women.” Titan’s Pillai agrees that having more women in the company’s manufacturing leadership councils will populate the rest of the leadership pipeline with women. Her goal is to have 18-20 per cent women in these roles within five years. Vedanta has set its sight on bumping up the 23 per cent share of women in its 67 executive bodies across the organisation, including factories, to 30 per cent by 2030. “We plan to do this by grooming diversity leaders in deputy roles over 6-12 months to take up senior leadership positions,” says Srivastava.
Thirty per cent is the magic number to make any kind of meaningful impact in any segment at any level. But setting aside all other social barriers, a big stumbling block in reaching this figure is women’s lack of confidence and courage to take on more challenges. Many times, they underplay their competencies, and a lot has to do with social messaging and conditioning from a young age, the leaders say. Zaveri’s solution is to work with women on two levels simultaneously—at the senior-most level and under the age of 12 to make them believe that they can do whatever they want to do.
As we celebrate the 18th edition of the BT Most Powerful Women in Business special issue, the 52 women who will appear as you turn this page are those who have delivered substantial and significant impact in their industries. Many of them are champions of diversity, and all of them are inspirational role models.
As these women leaders go about changing the status quo, a piece of advice from them to the women out there: Raise your hand.
Story: Vidya S.
Producers: Arnav Das Sharma, Vivek Dubey
Creative Producers: Raj Verma, Nilanjan Das
Videos: Vivek Sheel
Developers: Dharmender Kumar, Sumati Gaur, Pankaj Negi, Harmeet Singh