Who said women cannot lead?

‘If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman’, the late Margaret Thatcher, Iron Lady and former Prime Minister of the UK, had stated. Rightly so, for women have it in them ‘to do, to lead’. More and more women are breaking the glass ceiling, a clear sign of their capabilities.

However, questions have been raised on whether women are ‘less career-oriented and less willing to take up leadership roles’. These questions crop up as there are very few women leading from the front not just in the corporate sector but in other fields too. Are women less equipped to handle leadership portfolios, which men generally take on rather easily?

Challenging male domination

Being a woman myself and at the helm of a corporate company, I disagree with this theory that women are less equipped to handle leadership portfolios. The fact of the matter is that the surge of women into the corporate world is a fairly recent phenomenon and some of them have seized the opportunity and have been successful leaders. For instance, the banking and financial sector has quite a few women (such as Chanda Kochhar of ICICI; Shikha Sharma of Axis Bank; Naina Lal Kidwai of HSBC India; Kalpana Morparia of JP Morgan India) at the top, leading by example.

Gender doesn’t matter for leadership. The historical fact is that men have been leaders because of male dominance.

Women in India have entered the workforce in the last two decades or so, prior to which they were mostly confined to the household and involved in setting up small cottage industries, which didn’t demand a high level of training, education and skill. All that changed with the advent of technology, with jobs opening up for women across industries in IT, BFSI, Hospitality, Education, Bio-Technology, Airlines and many others.

With the workforce in India pegged at approximately 470 million plus people, and with a growing demand for skilled and highly trained people, we are witnessing a paradigm shift with an increasing number of women pursuing professional courses such as engineering, medicine, management and vocational courses. They are also entering spheres hitherto seen as dominated by men: automobile, real estate or manufacturing.

More role models needed

Despite so much happening, the questions remain: Are women well-equipped to handle high-pressure situations, manage and control large dynamic teams that are multi-talented and multi-faceted, while being authoritative and objective in their approach?

While generalising and making blanket statements about either gender is not fair, it’s important to know that both the genders do work in manners which are different. Not all men are leaders and not all women can be leaders. Those with distinct talent, attitude, aptitude, creative ideas, mental strength, vision and many other traits make the grade of leadership.

As for whether women are less career-oriented, there are several family compulsions (bringing up children for one) which make her either take a break from her career or put aside her career ambitions. The choice in such instances is a collective family decision. That does not make her less ambitious or less career oriented.

However, there is a dearth of sufficient role models within the ecosystem for them to make the plunge, but this should not be a hindrance, as society has come to believe that only merit should be the measuring parameter.

For the women of today, it’s their time under the sun.

(The author is MD - e2e People Practices)

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