India’s most powerful women in business

WHEN FORTUNE BROUGHT OUT its first list of most powerful women in 1998, only two on the list headed Fortune 500 companies. In the 2011 list, there are 15 CEOs. It’s a notable increase, of course, but it still means that women account for just 3% of those who head America’s largest companies. Compare this with the results of executive search firm EMA Partners International's survey of 240 Indian companies: 11% of them were headed by women. Good news for Indian women? Undoubtedly.

But there’s a long way to go. Today, only 36% of the total labour force in the country are women, according to estimates by Catalyst, an international nonprofit that works with businesses to build inclusive workplaces. According to research by Future Insights, the research arm of the Future Group, if India’s total workforce sees the addition of 35% more women, the country could be richer by $35 billion (Rs 1.74 lakh crore). That’s nothing to sneeze at, so why isn’t there a more focussed effort to get more women into the workplace?

The answer has to do with generations of social conditioning and the unwillingness of the majority to give up long-held gender stereotypes. The good news is there are some sectors that have adapted seemingly more easily, notably banking and financial services.

A lot of this has to do with how the leadership at ICICI Bank, in particular, created opportunities for women to grow; other banks and financial institutions also did their bit. The EMA Partners survey shows that more than half the number of women CEOs head companies in this sector. And that’s also perhaps why more than one-fifth of Fortune India’s list of most powerful women in business is from the financial services industry. Names such as Chanda Kochhar of ICICI Bank, Shikha Sharma of Axis Bank, Naina Lal Kidwai of HSBC India, Vedika Bhandarkar of Credit Suisse, and Ashu Suyash of Fidelity India figure on almost any list of Indian women achievers.

But with them are women from industries that have traditionally been male dominated: manufacturing, engineering, biotech, and the like. Harshbeena Zaveri, who heads NRB Bearings, for instance, or Mallika Srinivasan of TAFE, might have inherited their companies, but they have not remained mere figureheads. Others, such as Zia Mody, have set up flourishing companies.

THERE ARE MANY SUCH success stories, and these have, perhaps, resulted in some degree of apathy on the part of India Inc. when it comes to gender-sensitive workplaces. And women have not made too much of a noise about this. Unlike, say, in France, where last year, women wearing fake beards accused a company’s chairman at a corporate shareholders’ meeting of gender discrimination. Such campaigns gained momentum at annual meetings till, early this year, France amended its laws to boost the representation of women on corporate boards to 40%. Spain, the Netherlands, and Norway have already adopted such measures.

A recent study by the Asia Society points to female representation throughout the Asia-Pacific region being under 7%, or less than half of that in the U.S. This is despite the political scenario being more inclined towards female leadership for South Asian nations. Be it the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, or India—all these countries have seen women in power at high levels of government and office. However, the percolation to the corporate world has been less than seamless.

Look at these numbers: Of the top 100 companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange, barely 120 women, or 1%, are part of their 1,112 directorships. What’s more, 54% of the companies on the BSE don’t have women directors at all.

The lack of any serious calls for affirmative action might be one reason for such low numbers. The other is that women often leave the workforce for a short or long term in the middle of their careers. When they re-enter, they find that the door to the corner office is often closed to them, since others (generally their male colleagues) have stayed on and moved up the ladder faster. (See story on page 96.)

Stuti Jalan, a communications entrepreneur who attended the recent Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit in Los Angeles, as part of a leadership programme, came away a little surprised. “Even in a country like America, women are given boardroom positions purely to demonstrate diversity and enrich corporate profiles,” she says. Whatever the reason, the fact is that across the world, more women are entering the C-suite, and are ready to stay on. After all, business benefits from such changes. Jalan adds: “It’s about an attitude that prevails in a capitalistic society and women ought to be more conscious about providing inspiration for generations to follow.”