Why Vishal Sikka is right about women

If people in leadership roles recognise the need to lend a hand to undo decades of discrimination, that's a promising beginning

“Every time I am at Mysore, I am reminded of the fact that more than half our trainees are women. Then, I look at our executive teams and realize that almost none of them made their way up there,” Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka wrote in an email to employees on International Women’s Day.

This was not just some stream-of-consciousness musing. Sikka followed it up by saying he intends to do something about this: through a recently set up global diversity council, the company will ensure that “women account for 25 per cent of the Infosys Leadership Team.”

Sikka has not spelt out the details of how the diversity council will go about this. But even his recognition of the fact that while women are on a par with men when it comes to capabilities, (as shown by the 50 per cent representation at the trainee stage), something happens to hamper their climb up the ladder, is encouraging, as is his decision to take corrective action.

Too often, women alone are blamed for this state of affairs, without recognising the wider context in which this happens. It’s easy to state the fact that many women are willing to trade higher salaries for jobs with regular hours or take breaks from work, suggesting that by making these choices, women are consciously making the choice to drop out of the race to the top and hence, no one should complain

But that’s only part of the picture. If companies are committed to achieving a more equitable workplace, what they might need to analyse is why women take these “breaks” and try and do something about that. The reasons may have as much to do with the society we live in and the expectations it has of women which, like it or not, are not the same for men. When even an Indra Nooyi gets berated for not fulfilling her “womanly” duties or feels guilty for not being able to attend her children’s PTA meetings, what about the thousands of less empowered women and the great balancing act they are expected to do? 

Conversations about gender disparities continue across the world, the latest being the high-profile Silicon Valley case of Ellen Pao suing her former employer, venture capital fund Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, for discrimination. The trial is still under way but, as an article in The New York Times says, “What is really under examination in this trial is the question of why there are so few women in leadership positions in Silicon Valley.” Pao, the article adds, was advised to speak up but not talk too much, be confident but not cocky, critical but not negative. 

Mindsets don’t change overnight and achieving gender equality, at the workplace and outside, is going to be a long slog. But if people in leadership roles like Vishal Sikka recognise the need to lend a hand to undo decades of discrimination, that’s a promising beginning.