Women executives in the IT industry

Abstract

With annual revenues of USD 60 billion, the Indian IT-BPO industry has emerged as the largest private sector employer in the country, with direct employment of 2.23 million professionals and indirect employment of over 8 million people in different industry sectors. Interestingly, the sector is responsible for recruiting the largest number of qualified women from the overall workforce of 400 million. In 2007-08, the IT sector had 28 per cent women in its workforce compared to 24 per cent in 2005-06. This number is slated to go up to 45% by 2010, as predicted by NASSCOM. At the entry level, in 2005-06, 38 per cent were women compared to 47 per cent in 2007-08. In 2004, only four companies had formal defined policies for gender diversity and, this number had risen to 80 by 2008. Despite all this feel-good news and visible improvements in women’s representation in the IT workforce a survey of 50 companies by NASSCOM revealed that women account for only 11 percent of the leadership roles in senior management. Women were predominantly segregated at the entry and middle management levels in organizations. According to a recent study, only 26.1 percent of the listed companies (392 of 1,500 firms) have a woman on their boards. Out of the 278 directors on the BSE Sensex companies, there are only 10 women directors. Apart from this, women executives in India earn 40 percent less than what men earn over their entire career. Even when compared to global counterparts, corporate India stands below average. Over 77 percent of the 200 largest companies in the world, as ranked by Fortune, had at least one women director on their board as of 2006. Only 36 percent of Indian companies have women holding senior management positions as compared to 91 percent of companies in China. These figures force us to ponder, on how successful, women have been in reaching executive leadership positions in Corporate India. Hence we decided to take a look at the gender diversity initiatives and policies in top IT organizations to uncover how effective they are in retaining women and helping them up the corporate ladder.