India At 2024: Women Are Reshaping Corporate Workplaces Across The World. Is India Inc. Ready?

In a world that is constantly attempting to grapple with the pandemic-led setbacks to gender parity along most fronts, corporates across the world are fast emerging as potential conduits of change. A fresh break from past trends, over 23 companies in the Global 500 in 2021 had women in top leadership positions. While the number may seem unimpressive at first glance, one must view it in light of the disruptions caused in global female labour force participation indices over the past two years.

A trend that finds its roots in the early 2010s has received new impetus in the post-pandemic times. Global corporates have now actively begun to recognise the unique values introduced by women in both cubicles and boardrooms, be it improving organisational performance or individually achieving high work outcomes.

An ILO report from 2019 has revealed that businesses have seen massive improvements on the lines of creativity, innovation, openness, reputability, and ability to gauge customer sentiment with increased women participation. The report also showed a positive correlation between higher levels of GDP growth and a rise in female employment at national levels. 

Looking Ahead: India@2047

There is, thus, a heightened understanding in companies of the potential of a female talent pool ripe with the essential soft and hard skills, just as they begin to come to terms with a growing unskilled workforce across verticals. With their higher-than-average emotional self-awareness, adaptability, and empathy, both as mentors and as colleagues, women are also proving to be indispensable in building productive and progressive work cultures.

What was previously touted as ‘pink-collar’ professions, relegating women to the fields of caretaking and nurturing, have also come to the forefront as game-changers for the industry on multiple fiscal and opportunity parameters. This has challenged previous stereotypes by proving that women too can succeed in fast-paced and ever-dynamic corporate job descriptions. 

While top corporates are beginning to evolve as more people-centric, culturally sound, and socially aware entities, women are also occupying departments tasked with the demanding jobs of managing, negotiating, and influencing people in pursuit of higher corporate goals. Increasingly, the demand for highly trained professionals who are also experts in interpersonal skills is growing in key corporate departments, including Human Resources (HR), Corporate Communications and Public Relations (PR), and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). It is in these frequently underestimated professions that women, globally and historically, have made the biggest cuts and left the most indelible impacts on their organisations’ market performance and standing by doing justice in achieving the core values of the company.

Reports, including numbers by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in America, periodically reveal that the PR industry comprises a global average of more than 70% women. Similarly, the 2018 Workplace Diversity Report showed that women made up 67% of the HR workforce globally and over 50% in India. There is no doubt that senior-level positions even in these fields continue to be male-oriented. While one may rightly bemoan the gap in female representation in traditional STEM fields, cumulative progress will only begin by celebrating and then building upon the gains made by women in these crucial occupations.

As the world makes more significant strides in boosting women's participation by recognising the value of corporate diversity, India Inc. must also readily adapt to global trends and actively attempt to equalise the tipping scales of its skewed gender balance. A recent dataset by the World Bank showed a considerable increase in women's workplace participation since the 1990s in both developing and developed countries.

But numbers from India paint a bleak picture with a further fall in the Female Labour Force Participation Rate (FLFPR) to 26.8% in 2020 from 27.4% in 2020, as per the UN report. The figures are even lower than those of our neighbours Bangladesh and Sri Lanka owing to their continual strides in economic and human development indicators.

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A further look at women's participation in senior management roles in India reveals that though the country is ahead of the global average, a lot of it can be attributed to the government’s new statutory guidelines, including the insertions in the Companies Act, 2013, that make it mandatory for companies to have at least one woman in top leadership. Thus, while 96% of companies surveyed did cross the minimal threshold, more needs to be done in giving women their voices more adequately. Certainly, India can do much more by tapping on its existing potential and harnessing the many hidden talents that a largely female workforce brings to the decision-making table.

Renavigating the corporate workplace in India will mean going much beyond the expected. Corporate will have to take into account the needs, demands, and unspoken contexts foreshadowing the existing imbalances in Indian society which make it hard for women to break the established glass ceiling. This goes well for structurally assessing existing norms in the workplace and encouraging both working professionals and future recruits to confidently climb up the corporate ladder as managers, directors, and leaders.

Consultancy firms such as ours including others have been pioneering the gender agenda for a long to achieve a 50-50 gender ratio in their workforce. With its unique Gender Audit Tool Kit, international development consultancy IPE Global Ltd. has also set an example by fulfilling its gender equality agenda through empirically-backed action. This tool can be used extensively in evaluating corporate policies and practices to ensure equality of status and opportunity for women. Similar audits and internal surveys can thus be conducted by organisations to develop practical, data-driven strategies for designing gender-sensitive workplaces and enhancing the participation and performance-driven outcomes of their female workforce. 

Bridging the gender gap, and hence achieving the objectives of SDG 5 will also require state intervention to incentivise, and not just regulate, employers in becoming more women-friendly. Working on other metrics like constant upskilling and reskilling, providing counselling and training programmes for all employees, as well as carefully maintaining work-life balance will help ameliorate the situation beyond numerical values.

Without a doubt, a collective resolve to work towards creating more women leaders and changemakers can not only inspire many more for generations to come and push the envelope on gender equality as a whole.

[Disclaimer: The opinions, beliefs, and views expressed by the various authors and forum participants on this website are personal.]