According to Mallika Srinivasan, chairman and managing director of TAFE, women’s representation on company boards appears to be improving in India, although it is primarily driven by regulations.
She emphasized some important statistics when moderating the “Women CXOs’ Session” at the Global Investors Meet 2024 on Monday. “If you look at the data points, globally, board level participation of women is about 19.7% — Chairman 6.7% and Chief Executive Officers 5%,” she stated. Their employment rate is actually rather healthy when you consider that they make up 73% of the workforce in Kenya, 61% in China, 53% in Malaysia and Indonesia, and 70% in Sweden.
Take a look at the 35% compared Indian data. “We must remember that board participation is driven by regulations; therefore, it is 17.1%, not that far behind the global benchmark,” she continued. “The board participation looks better, looks comparable.” The CEOs see a 4.7% decline in numbers and the chairman, 3.6%.
“The role of women is going to be crucial if we have to get our GDP up,” stated Ms. Srinivasan. It is going to be a lot harder climb without that.
Colgate-Palmolive (India) Ltd.’s managing director and CEO, Prabha Narasimhan, stated that “we must have a society that is safer and public transport that takes them from their places of work to home” in order to encourage women to enter the workforce.
Co-founder and managing director of Bharat Biotech International Limited Suchitra Ella remembered how her father had pushed her to pursue jobs traditionally performed by men. She also provided an example of how, during the COVID-19 pandemic, ladies worked long hours and returned home late.
The CEO, managing director, and creator of Multiples Alternate Asset Management, Renuka Ramnath, gave an explanation of why women don’t aim high enough. Using instances from her own business, she stated, “Women in leadership only make up 15% of the financial services sector, which is very women-friendly. Risk is the focus of my company, private investing. In my industry, there are only 2% of female-led businesses worldwide.
She asserts that women “remain fearful of taking risks.” Women, in my opinion, don’t want to fail. Their concern is the amount of time they have available. They experience guilt when they leave the house to go to work due to years of indoctrination. And you’ll be consumed by guilt.
A woman’s life is overly burdened with bureaucracy, according to Ipsita Dasgupta, MD of HP India. “We need to support women in managing this level of stakeholder management—there are parents, in-laws, and neighbors.” She described how her company established a mothers-in-law day. “To see what their daughters-in-law were doing, we invited the mothers-in-law to the R&D.” They stopped questioning why they were going home late since they were so pleased of their work, she said.
Read More: https://womenworldindia.com/
