‘Gender Parity is Changing for the Better in India’

Reports cite that gender parity is changing for the worse in India. What are your views?

Gender parity is changing for the better in India. As per the World Economic Forum Gender Report 2022, India still ranks quite poorly but in the last few years, there has been substantial progress. In the companies where I serve as an Independent Director, we have seen a significant increase in the number of women hired at all levels. While the services sector does quite well, even in the manufacturing sector, more women are joining the workforce. A few companies have even dedicated women-only manufacturing lines/shop floors. Meanwhile, in the services sector at the entry-level, most companies are striving for parity in hires between men and women. That said, reaching gender parity at senior levels in Indian companies will still take time because it takes decades to build up a pipeline of qualified women.  

Environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) investors are increasing their scrutiny of diversity and inclusion in companies. This has been an additional catalyst for bringing in more women into the workforce in India. Also, the number of women in elite educational institutions is increasing substantially. While India ranks 135 out of 145 in gender parity globally, in educational attainment India ranks better at 107. When I was at IIT Delhi, we had only one to two per cent of women students. Now, that ratio has gone up to roughly 20 per cent. With more women graduating from universities, the pool of qualified women is increasing and that is enabling companies to hire more women professionals. 

What is your advice to regulators, decision-makers and industry captains for enhancing the participation of women in the workforce and in senior leadership positions? 

Governments and regulators establish the frameworks and regulations that drive company policies. Indian regulators have been quite progressive in promoting gender diversity. India was one of the first few countries in Asia to have implemented the mandatory requirement in 2013 for at least one woman director on a board. Now I find that on many of the boards I serve on, we have more than one woman director even though it is not mandatory. Recently, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) released the Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report (BRSR) framework. Beginning in FY2023, for the first time, companies are required to report on a variety of topics including gender diversity. By mandating these disclosures, it will increase the pressure on our companies to improve their gender mix and inclusion metrics. 

Industry leaders must go beyond such regulations to truly foster inclusive workforces and open company cultures. The payoffs are immediate and substantial. Companies that ignore these facts are unable to compete and soon fall behind on key performance metrics. My experience is that the best leaders understand this and actively shape company policies to reflect these realities.  

What are the high points of your journey that shaped you to be the leader you are today? 

My career mantra has been to take the path less trodden; this always helps in advancing more quickly. When I went to IIT Delhi, I was one of only four women in a class of 250 and the only woman in my section of 50 students during the first two years. While it was extremely challenging, I learnt to compete and succeed in a male-dominated environment fairly early on in my career. Subsequently, working on Wall Street was easy! I learnt to stand up for what I believed was right, call out discrimination, and be confident in my abilities to get complex tasks done well. 

When I started working as an investment professional in New York and Boston in the late 1980s, it was a very cliquish culture with virtually no diversity. I was a young brown woman working with older white men, almost all educated at a few elite universities and belonging to exclusive social clubs. I realised that I would have to carve out my own path and venture into new investment areas that had not yet been taken over by these people. That started my journey as an investor in emerging markets, and I have not looked back!  

I was one of the first foreign investors in India when India opened up its capital markets in 1992. I have seen India transform in the past three decades, and it has been a fascinating and rewarding journey. As India has grown, my professional responsibilities and interests have grown as well. My time at Blackstone and seeing the impactful role of boards in the private equity industry, led me to become an Independent Director. All these experiences have shaped me as an investment professional and company leader. 

Please share an anecdote of a challenge you faced, particularly as a woman professional or leader, and how you overcame this. Did you witness other women professionals facing challenges unique to them? How have some of these challenges been addressed today for gender parity?

Women professionals always have to prove themselves to get respect. When I was doing my PhD in Finance at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, I was the only woman student in my class, and to complicate matters, I also had my first child. My professors were quite unsure about how to handle my situation since they had never encountered it before. They did not know whether to support me for my PhD as they thought once I became a mother, I would abandon my studies.  

I had to struggle to overcome these biases. Fortunately, I came up with a dissertation topic that was liked and embraced by the faculty. As a result, I was one of the first few students in my class to complete my thesis. I proved to the faculty that a woman and a mother could complete their PhD in a shorter time span than men. Hopefully, that changed their views on what women could accomplish!