Average women representation in India Inc hasn't changed in 2 years: Study

The average representation of women in India Inc has not changed in the last two years and stands at 36.6 per cent, a study released on Thursday said. Last year, this stood at 36.9 per cent.

The "Best Companies for Women in India (BCWI) study" released by Avtar and Seramount showed that the representation of women improved rapidly from 25 per cent in 2016 to 33 per cent in 2019. However, its improvement slowed down during the Covid-19 years.

In 2020, it stood at 34 per cent, 34.5 per cent in 2021, and 34.8 per cent in 2022. These findings were derived from an analysis of 110 companies that were named "Best Companies for Women".

Interestingly, at the entry level, women's representation was close to 40 per cent. It was relatively lower in managerial roles at 28.4 per cent.

The study highlighted that among all industries, information technology (IT) had the highest number of "Best for Women" companies. Out of all, 24 per cent of these companies were from the IT sector alone.

It was followed by 11 per cent in banking, financial services, and insurance, and 9 per cent in manufacturing as well as global capability centres (GCCs).

Sectors like professional services are very near gender balance at 46 per cent, while manufacturing reported a gender ratio of 20 per cent.

However, a sizeable proportion of the "Best Companies" were multinationals at 63 per cent. The rest were Indian companies.

"These numbers are encouraging, but they also underscore that there is much more to be done," said Saundarya Rajesh, founder-president, Avtar.

"The road ahead is filled with opportunities, and the progress we’ve seen from participating companies inspires us to keep pushing the envelope on what is possible."