When a couple of years back, capital market regulator Security and Exchange Board of India asked all listed firms to comply with the New Companies Act of 2013 and appoint at least one woman director on the board of their firms --- it set off a last minute scramble to meet the extended deadline of April 1, 2015. Some 200 firms reportedly left it until two days before deadline to make the appointments, and a similar number held board meetings on the last day, before they could make the required change. Prior to that, the condition was met with incredulity and scorn from some sections of corporate India.
Even then, newspaper reports suggests that nearly half of the appointments made were from within the families of promoters or top executives, with wives and daughters of senior executives heading the selections. Some appointed bankers and chartered accountants, others took on board foreign nationals. It would be hard to discern what percentage actually looked within the senior executive rungs of their own firms to source talent, assuming that there were senior women executives, given the slim chances that women traditionally have to rise to such positions.
Later that year, Rediff.com ran an article on a study conducted by consultancy major Deloitte Global titled “Women in the Boardroom: A Global Perspective”. For India the big takeaway was that China had a higher percentage of women represented on the boards of companies than India. “In terms of percentage of board seats held by women, India's score stood at 7.7 percent while that of China was at 8.5 percent. The US had a score of 12.2 per cent and that of Germany was 18.3 per cent.” “The highest percentage of women directors were in Norway (36.7%), followed by France (29.9%), Sweden (24.4%), Italy (22.3%) and Finland (22.1%).”
What is interesting that for India, when the percentage was calculated before the enforced SEBI guidelines, there was just 4% representation of women on the boards of 8000 Indian companies. As it is, only 3% of its boards were found to be actually headed by women. At 6%, gender diversity in Asia was lowest compared to other parts of the world, the article quoted the study as saying.
Other reports suggest that only six companies in India went beyond the mandated “at least one woman represented on boards” to have more than one woman. Where gender quotas are not fixed by an authority, as in key managerial positions, Indian companies do not bother, with some notable exceptions. Women managers and executives are better represented in finance and banking sectors, where they do exceedingly well, also in pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, IT, telecom, as opposed to manufacturing and engineering firms with some exceptions.
It is a known fact that women enter the workforce in large numbers but thin out and disappear from the higher levels of the organisation. The traditional reason trotted out is that women are non-serious about their careers and most opt out after marriage and children. But career-focused women find other invisible barrier. Research has found that “75% of women executives stagnate in corporate India for 7 to 15 years in mid-level executive positions”. “As much as 39% of women enroll in management institutions but their actual participation in these positions is a mere 12%”.
An academic paper titled “Women Executives and the glass ceiling: Myths and Mysteries, written by Prof Usha Kiran Rai and Monica Srivastava of the Faculty of Management Studies, Banaras Hindu University, says “as one recruiter puts it, the biggest barrier to women in top management levels is the 'bunch of guys sitting together around the table' making all the decisions. In short, when deciding who to promote into management, male corporate leaders tend to select people as much like themselves as possible “ so it is no surprise that women are frequently not even considered at promotion time”. Men at the top look to former colleagues and friends and old school ties, the paper suggests.
Apparently the concept of the glass ceiling first surfaced in the US in the 1970s. Hillary Clinton, seeking to run for President for her party, more famously used it to describe her attempt to become the US's first female president. (There have been 68 women presidents and heads of government in modern times). According to the study, the US department of labour defines “glass ceiling” as an artificial barrier based on attitudinal or organisational bias that prevents qualified women and other minorities from advancing upward in their organisation and senior management level positions”.
The other reasons suggested for this dismal position of women in leadership, are family responsibilities, the nurturing instinct, societal pressures, but modern management studies suggest that companies are structured to favour the life cycles of males, rather than those of women that necessarily runs into child bearing/nurturing roles. Given their forward vision, it is not surprising that Scandinavian and Nordic countries do better on these parameters.
India seems a long way away. In politics at the grassroot panchayat and municipal level, quotas for women turn into family affairs, with powerful men putting up wives and relatives. Corporate India responded in like manner, as seen with the Sebi guidelines. Of the 4% representation on company boards prior to the rule, just 2% had independent women on their boards. The tendency, across industry, is to look for compliant relatives, or persons who will play secondary roles, rather than independent women, whose abilities put them on an equal or higher footing. Across offices and sectors in the country, this scenario repeats itself.
Pamela D’mello is an independent journalist
