Edit on Women two years ago

Dec 14 2009, 2235
Gender equality seems to be headed the right way in India, at least in terms of employment and even leadership positions in the corporate sector. Two distinct studies point in that dir­ection: the first one by EMA Partners International, which says that 11 per cent of 243 top Indian companies by revenue have women CEOs, compared with only 3 per cent of US companies in the Fo­rtune 500 list; and the second one by industry body Nasscom and human resources consulting firm Mercer, which shows that India has more working women than any other country in the world (30-35 per cent of our 400 million workforce comprises women). That is indeed good news for a country where the word ‘female’ is men­tioned quite frequently with the word ‘foeticide’. Always a land of complexities and contrasts, India is a place where women exist at two extreme ends of the universe. At one level, a woman is considered a force to be worshipped—the mother goddess and life giver. At the other extreme, the woman is rejected and abused, deprived even of the right to be born. The female foeticide figures stare us blatantly in the face, with United Nations estimates showing that almost 2,000 female foetuses are aborted a day in India. The country’s sex ratio, according to the 2001 census, at 933 females per 1,000 males, is among the lowest in the world. Somewhere between these two extremes there is a gradual surge of a class of women who are pushing their way ahead and holding their own in what used to be a ‘man’s world’ -- breaking free of the glass ceiling. This also has a lot to do with the rapidly increasing number of women who are going in for higher studies. The Nasscomm-Mercer study also highlights that while in the 1980s, only 5-8 per cent of students in engineering colleges were women, in 2005, women formed 40.4 per cent of students in institutes of higher education. Slowly, but surely, women have moved into top positions and are demolishing stereotypes, in terms of power, position and wealth. So, while companies consider female employees to be better at managing teams and client relationships and at handling crises, wealth managers are now making a beeline for them with investible surpluses. The change is pervasive at all levels of decision-making. Women are unafraid to take their own decisions, which includes personal, corporate and financial. And that is what drives them to lead projects and eventually companies. An interesting fact that is evident from these figures is that male mindsets in the country have changed, too, with men becoming more open to the idea of having a woman as ‘boss’, which was not exactly the case several years ago. It is even more heartening that all of this is happening in India, which is racing ahead of even the developed countries. That leaves one with greater hope for gender inclusiveness in the country. The outlook would be infinitely more promising if the country could also witness a change in the mindsets that lead to declining numbers of women in the population. The task looks Herculean, but with a look at the achievements of women so far, it is definitely not impossible.