May her tribe increase: Auto cos hire more women for shop floor roles

She is gradually stepping into an area which has been his fiefdom for ages, as more and more automobile companies in India encourage women to take up positions in manufacturing operations.

Not just in scooter or car manufacturing, today women are making their presence felt on shop floors in making tractors and trucks too with companies like Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M), Eicher Motors, Hero MotoCorp and Bajaj Auto seeking to accelerate the drive of gender diversity.

Four years ago, Tata Motors started with a batch of just five women with an aim of "creating a brigade of 'Women in Blue' by enrolling, educating and skilling girls, especially from economically deprived areas".

Today, the company boasts of 1,812 women employees working on its shop floors, which is about 4 per cent of the total shop floor workforce (as on July 31, 2018), across its different plants.

Not too far behind, rival M&M's automotive division began with 23 in 2016 and today it has over 380 women across all its manufacturing plants, while the company's farm division and subsidiary Swaraj employs over 250 women on the shop floor.

Likewise, Royal Enfield, the two-wheeler division of Eicher Motors, runs an entire engine assembly line with women workforce of approximately 140.

Two-wheeler market leader Hero MotoCorp too had embarked on Project Tejaswani with an aim of introducing women in shop floor and today the company has 160 women working in various roles in assembly operations at its different factories.

Rival Bajaj Auto has 'Women Only' assembly lines at its Chakan and Pantnagar plants. In the last four years, its women employee strength has more than doubled to 355 in 2017-18 from 148 in 2013-14.

The slowly increasing population of women on shop floors of automobile companies is a sign of the changing times when gender equality is being stressed upon.

"At Tata Motors, we strongly believe that what's good for women is good for society and what's good for society is good for business," Tata Motors Chief Human Resources Officer Gajendra Chandel told PTI in an e-mailed response.

He said the company has taken certain internal targets to promote diversity positively balancing the same with meritocracy.

Echoing similar sentiment, M&M Chief People Officer Rajeshwar Tripathi said:"At Mahindra, we have taken several initiatives to step up gender diversity on the shop floor...The journey started with the hiring of 23 women associates in 2016 and the number has now increased to over 630."
Highlighting the impact of women on shop floors, he said:"We strongly believe that the inclusion of women workforce has contributed significantly to improving the culture at the shop floor."
In his message to shareholders in the company's annual report 2017-18, Hero MotoCorp Chairman, Managing Director and CEO Pawan Munjal said: "I am personally driving the agenda of gender diversity and empowerment at Hero MotoCorp and consequently, the number of women staff including on our shop floors - has gone up considerably over the past few years."
Similarly, Chandel said:"Tata Motors is highly focused on skilling them (women workers) through structured technical education programmes run in collaboration with the Automotive Skill Development Council."