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Industry & Economy - Gender


Empowering women on Pune shopfloors

Our Bureau

Pune , April 15

THE new chief of the Confederation of Indian Industry's (CII) western region, Mr Pradeep Bhargava, has a challenging mission ahead of him this year.

Along with the Vice-Chairperson, Mr Rahul Kirloskar, who is also Director, Exports at Kirloskar Oil Engines, he has the task of ensuring that Pune city has more women not just on its corporate horizon but also on its shop floors. Despite being one of the fastest growing engineering-manufacturing hubs of the country, which is home to heavy weights such as Bajaj Auto and Tata Engineering, one of the striking features of the industry in the region has been the marked absence of women at the factory level. This is while the corporate cream is represented by names like Ms Anu Aga who is Chairperson at Thermax and Ms Sulajja Firodia-Motwani who is Joint-Managing Director at Kinetic, and women taking on top slots at Veritas India, and Infosys, Pune among other companies.

"At the local level we want to devote the next year to examining how our member companies can ensure gender diversity in their respective organisations,'' says Mr Bhargava. While the winds of change may have already started with a handful of trainee engineers visible now at Tata Engineering, Mr Bhargava says there is a lot of work to be done in this direction, mainly arising out of a mind-set that women on the shop floor are just not as equipped as men are to do their jobs. Empowering women could also take on other forms like convincing companies to outsource work to women entrepreneurs, many of who have made a mark in the city, which has a vibrant network of small self-help groups.

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