Woman power on the rise

Thanks to the government's push, the number of women on company boards has grown slowly but steadily

India Inc has been quick to adapt to changes in the Companies Act, 2013, which stipulates that every listed company and every public company having a paid-up share capital of not less than Rs 1 billion or a turnover of Rs 3 billion or more must have at least one woman director.
 
Each of the Nifty 200 index companies, which are the 200 largest in terms of market capitalisation, has complied, having at least one woman director. For these 200 companies, the number of women directors has gone up from 157 in 2014-15 to 219 at the end of 2016-17.
 
Some of the 219 women directors had a presence on more than one board, taking the total number of female directorships to 292 across the 200 companies.
 
Women accounted for 11.18 per cent of the total directorships in 2014-15, and this went up to 14.08 per cent in 2016-17. These numbers may be small, but those in the business world say they are reassuring, as incremental change is more important than sweeping change that is artificially implemented.
 
Renuka Ramnath, founder and CEO of private equity fund Multiples Asset Management, and the first lady to be the chairperson of Tata Communications, says, “I am not one for overnight changes because they are not sustainable. Real change is gradual and must reflect the true motivation, which is to percolate into the corporate culture and expect them to be equal opportunity and not be denied or accepted just because of gender.”
 

Renuka Ramnath, Founder and CEO, Multiples Asset Management

Boards of most companies must push themselves to ask what women in business need, and this can include — but is not limited to — a safe environment, equal opportunities in growth and participation as well as sensitivity to milestones and socio-cultural nuances that women encounter, such as weddings, childbirth, and so on.
 
If, for example, one pushes the representation of women on company boards from the current 14 per cent to 50 per cent in a decade, one risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater, Ramnath adds. “An area where one needs to work on is on increasing senior management through other activities,” she says.
 
Historically, the real change has been the transition that was required in nuclear families, which was that the girl child could choose everything she wanted to pursue. That has happened to some extent, with younger women making a mark in sport, politics and business. There is no mental block to accepting women as leaders in those arenas, but the challenge is when they drop out of the work force and don’t return.
 
Ramnath is not alone in voicing this concern. Other senior board members also assert that they would like to see a wider pool of potential women directors. 
 
Aman Mehta, former CEO of HSBC Bank in India, who is an independent director on the boards of companies such as Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Steel and Vedanta, says most companies have complied with the requirement of including at least one woman member on their boards. “That being said, it’s important to remember that only in recent years have companies here seen women in the C-suite, and even now, among India’s top companies, how many have women CEOs?” Mehta says that the universe of women leaders to choose from has been historically small and will therefore take time to reach critical mass.
 
While there is no prohibition on the appointment of a female relative of a director on the board of a company, large companies have stayed away from such tokenism in favour of merit. Most of the boards of Nifty 200 companies do not have women family members, and those that do are mostly managing important functions as executive directors.
 
Of the 200 companies, only 21 companies list women directors as promoter-directors. Of these, 11 companies have them in executive roles, such as Biocon’s Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (chairman and managing director) and Lupin’s Vinita Gupta. However, for many smaller companies, it is still an easy option to put a woman relative of the promoters on boards. On the other hand, some groups and companies such as Tatas and Infosys have made strides in including women professionals such as Rama Bijapurkar, Ireena Vittal and Falguni Nayar as independent directors on their boards.
 

Zarin Daruwala, CEO, StanChart India

StanChart India CEO Zarin Daruwala says the talent pool is not just limited for boards but even for lateral hiring and key positions. “One struggles to find candidates, but having said that, to allow women to get the richness of the experience of a board position is the right step,” she says, adding that the more corporations groom talent on one board, the greater the cascading effect in the long term.”It’s a slow journey, and not an overnight fix.” 
 
Equally, Ramnath says that the real change has to be created in a manner in which women are not denied or accepted just because of gender.
 

Do women make better or worse directors on boards? Mehta’s says that “a board is a board is a board.” By that he means that nobody can expect the moon from people who are sitting in as advisors but bring checks and balances while there is an operational team in place.
 
However, from a demographic perspective, given that men and women are roughly split into equal numbers, it would seem optimal to have a similar representation in the corporate world as well. The key, everyone agrees, is to ensure both representation and competence.
 

Nisaba Godrej, executive chairperson, Godrej Consumer Products

Godrej Consumer Products (GCPL) executive chairperson Nisaba Godrej’s LinkedIn post about International Women’s Day is heartening. She says that one of her top personal goals is to make Godrej a force for diversity and inclusion. “This year, I am particularly proud of the fact that three out of the four new directors on the board of Godrej Agrovet are women and the two new directors on the board of GCPL are both women.” Besides Nisaba and sister Tanya Dubash, both companies have three other women directors, which puts both companies right on top in terms of board diversity.