International Women’s Day is around the corner and a slew of new reports and initiatives provide pointers on how the fairer sex is faring at the workplace.

The gender gap

The gender gap continues to persist across India Inc. According to the India Skills Report 2017 by People Strong and Wheebox, average gender diversity across organisations in India is limited to 71:29. Though some new-age sectors are better than the average, there are others where this number drops to a mere 7-10 per cent of the total workforce. According to the report, only 40 per cent of the employers who participated in the India Hiring Intent survey had defined targets to hire women candidates.

IT shows the way

While the overall number of women in the workforce is still low, the pink corner is growing in the IT sector. India’s IT-BPM industry employs nearly 3.9 million people of which over 34 per cent (1.3 million) are women. According to Nasscom’s latest Women and IT-Scorecard – India produced in partnership with the Open University UK, the number of firms with over 20 per cent women at senior level will increase to nearly 60 per cent in 2017, and nearly 51 per cent of firms will have more than 20 per cent of women at C-suite level.

Flagging ambition

More on women and the C-suite. Egon Zehnder’s latest Leaders and Daughters Global Survey conducted across seven countries shows that ambition wanes among women once they reach senior manager level. Nearly three-quarters (74 per cent) of women at the junior and middle manager levels aspire to one day reach senior or executive leadership ranks within their organisations. Yet surprisingly, in almost all the surveyed countries, ambition drops to 57 per cent once women are at senior manager level. Ambition is typically higher in developing economies, such as Brazil, where 92 per cent of women aspire to reach senior or executive leadership ranks, followed by China (88 per cent) and India (82 per cent). In the US, only 62 per cent reported this aspiration, followed by Australia (61 per cent), Germany (58 per cent) and the UK (56 per cent).

Invisible in Boards

All listed firms are required to have at least one woman director on board from April 1, 2015, as per markets’ regulator Security and Exchange Board of India’s directive as also under the Companies Act, 2013. But according to James Agrawal, Managing Director, BTI Consultants, 1,375 BSE-listed companies were fined in 2016 for failing to appoint women directors on their boards.

The 50:50 workplace

Many companies intend to hire more women, but struggle to find the talent as the male applicants’ pool is 10 times bigger. Epsilon, a data-based marketing company, has come up with a unique programme to beat that challenge. It is going to target a gender ratio of 50:50 by end of 2018. It also has an employee referral scheme. Since its launch in September 2016, the company has had 10 successful female referrals. As on December 31, 2016, Epsilon’s male-female ratio was at 69:31.

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