A recent cartoon in the newspaper shows a politician in jail and his wife standing with a newspaper listing the financial institutions worldwide being headed by women – IMF, SBI and US Federal Reserve – and telling him, “If I’d handled your finances you wouldn’t be here!”

Fortune Magazine has come up with its list of top 50 women in leadership positions around the world and all four Indian names there happen to be from the field of finance. While their International list carries women from different countries in various industries – retail, aviation, and even fashion houses (Chanel, Burberry), is it just a coincidence that the Indian names featured are only from the finance industry? The only other women in other international lists have been Sonia Gandhi (politics) and Kiran Mazumdar Shaw (Biocon) in the Forbes 100 list. Does the financial services industry in India breed a category of women who go on to blaze a trail in corporate leadership and rise to the top of an organisation?

Whilst globally, representation of women in top management is about 10 per cent, in India it ranges from 3-5 per cent. Of every 100 men that take managerial positions, the number of women is a very sad figure of two. In 2006, a study concluded that at junior levels representation of women in the workforce is 16, which comes down to four per cent in middle management and one in 100 CEOs in India are women.

In this scenario consider this: Arundhati Bhattacharya is the chairperson of India’s largest bank, SBI, Chanda Kochhar is the MD and CEO of ICICI Bank, Shikha Sharma is the MD and CEO of Axis Bank, Naina Lal Kidwai is the country Head for HSBC, Usha Thorat and Shyamala Gopinath were RBI Deputy Governors.

Women’s nature?

Some of the inherent reasons that have been put forward for women to be good in the world of finance are that they are “more careful about money” and “more conservative and structured”. Women are also said to make good judgement of a borrower situation.

Or as Subhalakshmi Panse puts it, they are “multi-taskers, team players and flexible”. Many studies have proved that women are more risk averse and don’t shift their portfolios as often as men.

The Job?

Job-related reasons vary. While there may be a large representation of women in media and hospitality or even health, there are fewer women at the top because the success in these industries requires a lot of travelling and networking, something traditionally, fewer women have been able to do, both for safety reasons and for family constraints. Lack of infrastructure to support a thriving managerial female population may be a cause why fewer women opt to continue after a certain level.

However, the overwhelming reasons are more organisation-related.

Or the organisation?

Most banks in all major cities have a well-developed gender policy. Many have a grievance cell for gender and work-related matter for women. Many companies have training programmes for employees for promotion-related purposes and women tend to find these training programmes both helpful and convenient. Again the support system seen in such companies are also helpful to women employees. These may include flexible working hours, medical benefits and crèches. the gender differences in wages are also less prevalent in this industry. Many financial institutions are also known for their mentoring programmes which help women to rise to the top.

Changing scenario

However, despitewith the financial services sector being around for much longer than some new age industries, things may change pretty soon in India. Technology companies have also striven to make it easier for women to continue working after middle management levels and in a few years, this industry may be rivalling banks in their top-job gender ratios. There are also fewer women in investment banking, probably due to the stress levels and long hours. Finally, it has been seen that women naturally gravitate to those jobs which already have women.

Therefore as more women make their mark in various industries, there will be more joining at the lower and middle management levels, with the confidence and the hunger to make it to the top as one from their tribe has successfully done before her.

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