Anand Mahindra bats for more women in boardrooms; says 10 pc hike in girls’ education can up GDP by 3 pc

Anand Mahindra says it’s time that companies have more women in positions of power.

When Anand Mahindra walks into the room at a recent event on a report of teenage girls across India, one is keen to know the Mahindra Group chairman’s thoughts on a movement that has toppled powerful men in India and across the world.

Dressed in a sharp blue suit, without a tie, the dapper businessman was asked whether corporate India had failed to give Indian women a safe working environment. “The whole world has failed to give women a safe working environment,” was his quick response. “It’s not just something we alone have to do, everyone has to do it. I could get a little overly impassioned about the topic because I am the son of a feminist author, the husband of a career woman and my two daughters are career women. So, my allegiance, I wear it on my sleeve.”




Mahindra also said that companies need to stop finding excuses not to hire women. “When I try to find out and talk to our executives on why we don’t have more women climbing the corporate ladder, the first answer is there isn’t a large enough pool of educated women that we can take on,” Mahindra said.

But personal experience proves otherwise. He added, “I find that no matter what excuses people give, when you have a woman CEO in the company, miraculously, that pool emerges, and you get more women. Women hire other women. They don’t have any biases; they don’t have any stereotypes. I think just having the awareness of the aspiration and existence of these women is going to change the rules of the game.”

And it’s going to change the direction of the country too, if people are just open to the idea, Mahindra said. “A 10 per cent increase in women’s education can increase the GDP by two-three per cent. Now that’s hard data. If I am a politician and want to get the country moving, it’s a direct co-relation. Awareness is very important. People need to know there are women with aspirations and there is no excuse not to tackle that pool anymore.”