Women not on top

Female CEOs skew the picture on gender equality

The findings of a recent survey by EMA Partners might prompt the leaders of India Inc. to congratulate themselves on achieving greater gender equality in the corner office than most other countries have managed. To do so, however, would be unwarranted, and indeed misleading. The executive search firm says its 240-firm survey shows that 11 per cent of large companies in India have women CEOs, compared to just 3 per cent in Fortune 500 companies. Apart from the obvious difference in sample size—one is half the other, and a larger sample in India might well throw up different results—it would be incorrect to conclude that India Inc has a thinner glass ceiling than exist in many other countries, the developed ones included. Eleven per cent, after all, is nowhere near 50 per cent.

There is also the important point that many of the CEOs belong to promoter families, and are not in their corner offices because of personal achievement alone. It might be argued that women from even promoter families did not get a chance to enter the family business in decades past, and hence even this qualifies as progress. Yes, it does, but while conservative business families may have begun to change, there is a long way to go before equal treatment of sons and daughters is achieved. Where, for instance, are the sisters of Mukesh Ambani?

This is not to detract from what India’s women CEOs have achieved. Indeed, in fast-growing professions like banking, their prominence is a source of justifiable pride. But it is precisely because the presence of professional women CEOs is a rarity in India that they attract a disproportionate amount of attention. CEO-ship, in fact, is neither a good indicator nor guarantor of gender equality—just as the fact that India was run by a woman prime minister for 16 years did little to enhance the status of women in India. A better indicator would be to study women’s participation in white collar activity, across the board. On this parameter, although women account for half the population, and despite the fact that many fast-growing industries prefer to hire women empoyees, India scores poorly—as the findings of the World Economic Forum’s latest Gender Gap report showed. Under the sub-indices “legislators, senior office managers and so on” and “professional and technical workers”, it turns out that China is leagues ahead of India.

The reason India Inc. should be concerned is that excluding women from the workforce deprives it of a huge human resource pool, precisely at a time when increasing global competition demands the best use of resources. Women are apt to ascribe their scanty presence in decision-making roles to male bias. This is, however, only a partial truth. As the gender gap report shows, gender equality in India diminishes dramatically up the education chain. In other words, India has fewer qualified women to employ than men. That is why the idea of “reserving” board positions for women is unlikely to improve matters. It is also true that corporate India’s response to women’s issues, such as maternity, has been poor. The concept of paternity leave is still a novel one to most, and only a tiny proportion of corporations—mostly IT firms—provide crèches or day-care facilities, services that are standard in the West. Both facts suggest the unfinished agenda for India Inc.