Gender equality not a social change, rather a business imperative for organizations

Gender gaps are prevalent in all sphere's of life and infer losses in terms of productivity and standard of living to the concerned individual and the nation. For a sustainable tomorrow and promoting business excellence, a strong women representation in the boardrooms and in the middle and junior workforce is paramount for all organizations. ETPrime Women Leadership Awards 2021 celebrates and recognizes women leaders who defying various odds, predominantly gender disparity, have harnessed the spirit of entrepreneurship and excellence.

In the World Economic Forum's (WEF) Global Gender Gap Report 2021, India ranked 140th among 156 nations, a fall of 28 places. Taking forward this idea of 'Gender equality at work and its progress', an expert panel of Rekha M Menon, Chairperson and Senior Managing Director of Accenture in India & Chairperson – NASSCOM; Karthik Reddy, Co-founder and Managing Partner, Blume Ventures and Kaku Nakhate, President and Country Head (India), Bank of America Merrill Lynch spoke in length about the concerns.

Talking about the struggling race of gender equality at the workplace despite resources, Rekha Menon avers that progress is a complex multi-dimensional problem that is rooted in our culture and social attitudes. “More so like shortage of employment and women labour because there's under-investment in the education of girls. Also, the nature of work sometimes hasn't been conducive to hire more women, such as in manufacturing or mining,” said Menon, adding that a lot of it also relies on factors of how much do women intend on joining a workforce, how far they want to progress and how much time they are willing to commit.


The glass ceiling between corporate management bodies and boardrooms is still perfectly impenetrable, and salary inequalities remain; however, things are changing at some of India's top companies. Emphasizing that change is slow; even then Menon finds a bright side in the corporate sector which has become stronger during the pandemic. Specifying on the Indian technology industry, Menon declared that about 34 percent of the total workforce is women.

“That's about 1.3 million women in the workforce. This is not just at the junior levels, but also about 1/4 of manager positions are held by women in the technology sector. As for Accenture, we have made a commitment of 50-50 workforce by 2025. Currently, in India, women represent about 45 percent of our workforce, which is huge. And at the manager at the MD level, we have about 26 percent women. So progress is there too,” she said.

Diving into the realm of startup ecosystem - wherein the focus is on product building, Karthik Reddy talking about dealing with the notion of gender equality argues that be it customer support or product development, one needs the women workforce at the table.

According to the Startup Outlook Report 2021, by Innoven Capital, gender diversity was still a challenge and there has been no improvement over the last few years. The report stated that only 77% of startups had less than 20% of women in leadership roles as compared to 69% in the year before.

“Diversity is required to build a much better product. I don't think anyone advocated a perfect measure of this ROI to me, but essentially said it's visible. And in today’s time when designing a product for the Indian customer, one needs to realize that 50 percent of customers are women,” he said. But he at the same time is also of the opinion that startups, by definition, are taking a far thinner interest in advocating this.

India's banking has had women reaching the top echelons of the sector; leaders like Arundhati Bhattacharya to Shikha Sharma to Naina Lal Kidwai have broken many a glass ceiling and become success stories in gender equality and diversity.

Talking about women in the banking sector Kaku Nakhate points out that traditional banking has had a lot of women for it is a safe job for them. Nakhate further brings to notice that at one point in time, the banking industry had many women leaders. “The CEOs are agnostic of gender. But there is no glass ceiling, at least at the top level. But the question that still ponders in front of us is -what are the chores a woman has to do? And even today, in many cases women continue to be a homemaker and a caregiver. But going forward, I think, be it the bank or any other corporate, they have to make it friendly for the woman to be able to come and devote time,” she said.

While the question of gender equality pertaining in fields across sectors continues to linger, Rekha Menon suggests starting at the top if one is looking at solutions.

“Recognise that it is not a social change one is bringing in the organization, rather it is a business imperative. Because enough data business cases have proven that so one needs to do better or be more innovative and have better financial performance,” she added.

The leaders in the panel who have excelled in their respective fields dealt in detail the benefits for businesses of keeping skilled women in the workplace and encouraging them to work in various positions in the organization. The panel also discussed the nature of roles played by women in the wake of the pandemic. You can watch the panel discussion at The ETPrime Women Leadership Awards 2021 here.