Where Women stand today in the Corporate world-A Research Roundup - With special emphasis to Indian women and education

"The most gladsome thing in the world is that few of us fall very low; the saddest that, with such capabilities, we seldom rise high". - James M. Barrie

The above lines are more apt for the present day potential, smart, multi-tasker super woman.

Over the past quarter century, the world has witnessed some dramatic improvement in the percentage rise of women employment and in the workforce. The potential of women has been well embraced and the corporate sector is realizing the ‘added value’ women bring to the workplace.  According to the study of Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012, women account for 47% of the workforce, this is an evidence of the commendable improvement of position of women in the workplace over the past years.  But, out of 47% only 15% -- an increase of only 1.2% since the 2011 CWDI Report, make it to the board levels. Also another study by a relevant source shows that 10% of the Fortune 500 companies have NO WOMEN at all on their boards.

The top female executives over the globe may have incredible high pay-offs, are being compensated with health and medical benefits, ESOP’s and numerous other perks, but pay parity still exists.

So are women still lacking somewhere? As per the latest figures, women today are better educated than ever, with 60% of graduate degrees, then what keeps them away from climbing the ladder to the top? Are we still trying to break the glass ceiling or are we stuck in a glass coop? Below are the reasons as to why and where are women still lacking?

·   COMPENSATION-The SOUL factor:  Not surprising, the majority of workers (70 percent) reported increasing salaries is the best way to boost employee retention while 58 percent pointed to better benefits.

The factor that gets the minimum mean value shows that it is highest in the ranking order and is the most important factors that affect the performance of an individual at work place. Therefore with this study and the responses of the candidates it was identified that MONEY is the highest ranking factor and has the lowest mean value of 2.48. And still there exists a wage inequity; women don’t get paid as much as men and that include the ones on the higher ranks. One reason gender pay gap can be attributed to is the “career choices’ women make and the job sectors they choose: women prefer taking up teaching jobs in education, and social work, which offer relatively less pay as compared to fields such as IT, science or finance.  But this does not completely explain the pay inconsistency. According to Census statistics, September 2012 based on the median earnings of all full-time workers, in 2011, women's earnings were 77.0% of men's compared to 77.4% in 2010.  The denouement is that there has hardly been a progress in the pay equity.

·         THE BOSS BIAS: In generalization, the management perceives that women possess less risk taking ability and are not very comfortable in a commanding stance position. Therefore, they are assigned less challenging tasks, whereas men get more critical assignments that lead to better advancements.  According to a recent Catalsyt study, projects headed by men had budgets twice as big and three times as many staffers as the women’s.

Women are less insistent than men in moving ahead to ask for the big jobs that they want. Less challenging tasks provide fewer opportunities for women to prove themselves and hence comes into existence-THE GENDER GAP.

 The bias extends to the level that in a classic discrimination experiment conducted by Sociology professors Shelley Correll and Stephen Bernard on motherhood biasness, the conclusion was that when considered for the same job, mothers were significantly less likely to be recommended for hire and they were offered lesser starting salary on average than childless women. This normative discrimination shows why we stand; where we stand today.

·         THE NEWTORKING ANAMOLY: Women are proficient relationship builders, yet we don’t make use of our contacts to get ourselves endorsed or advance in the career paths. Exchange of ideas on social grounds, allows women to share problems, information and find solutions to the common issues they face. These social bonds that they develop have tremendous untapped potential that can be used for career advancement. Men network in a more operational manner- establishing a quid pro quo of career assistance. Women socialize equally as men, but yet they are not as efficient at employing the robust networks to progress in their careers. This isn’t just alarming for women; it’s also an issue of concern for men. We are aware of the fact that organizations with more women sitting at the decision making tables give results that boost productivity, employability and bottom line profitability.  But the situation of career parity is such that, the pool of qualified female employees for top jobs gets smaller when the cream class has to leave to raise families or to pursue other domestic work.

·         WORK/PARENTING BALANCE-the OPT-OUT option: In spite of better opportunities than ever, to work in the present day scene, high potential women are leaving their career to care of their families. But, they are not doing it on purpose. If we look at the global picture, women who leave work to take care of their families tend to stay off-work for longer periods specifically in countries like Japan, the U.S. and Germany, as compared to Indian women, and they have less success in finding a job when they are ready to return to work. The decision to OPT-OUT is not an easy one anymore, as the consequences could be: No job at all, low paying jobs, or part-time jobs. The OPT-OUT option underlines that women still feel the pressure to having both hands full and they are exposed to the feeling of stress and discouragement when their dreams seems to be in a threat with a chance of impossibility.

These paradoxes are critical and the need to address them is urgent. The need of the hour is to create a just and fair system which supports and encourages women to take initiatives and step into the leadership pipeline. As Warren Buffet, in his groundbreaking essay on women, rightly said: “the fun-house mirror needs to be broken and women should not hold themselves back and no one should hold them back”.

The STATE of INDIAN Women in the Corporate World

The portrait of Indian educated women is defined as an image developed from the collision between the India Inc. - budding with its potential assortment of opportunities and the convential India- whose customs and traditions play a crucial role in shaping women’s position and career choices in the society.

According to a recent study sponsored by the private-equity fund Everstone Capital, thousands of Indian women in the country's workforce today are set to make the country 12 per cent richer by 2015 and 25 per cent richer by 2025. This colossal development can be attributed to socio-economic and cultural changes taking place in the country.

But, wait you shouldn’t be very happy about these figures. In 2008, the female labour participation rate in India was only about 33% , whereas for men the labour participation rate was found to be 81%. By way of comparison, it was 68 per cent for females in China. The participation of women in India's workforce fell from 28.7 per cent in 2004-05 to 22.8 per cent in 2009-10, and even further to 21.9 per cent in 2011-12, according to the latest report from National Sample Survey Office (NSSO).

According to working women and experts, the most critical reasoning could be attributed to a network of lack of supportive programs, social prejudices, and also the growing fear for personal safety, are constraining women's participation in the country's economic growth. Among Indian States, the labour participation rate in case of females is one of the lowest in Delhi. Jayan Jose Thomas, the assistant professor of humanities and social sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, says that there is "social discomfort" in allowing women to work outside the home.  "This is the big difference between India and the rest of the world," he said. 

According to the Census, Delhi provides female participation at just 10.6% as against a male participation rate of 53.1%. Ahmedabad is the next one in queue to follow Delhi in terms of job opportunities for women, with a female workforce participation of just 11.7%.

The other two metro cities Kolkata and Mumbai take a median position, with female workforce participation rates of around 18%. The southern part is better with recognizing and encouraging women power with cities such as Chennai and Thiruvananthapuram scoring around 20%. The crown positions are secured by are Coimbatore and Bengaluru, at nearly 25%. To put this in other words, the ratio is of 2:1, for every two working men there is one working woman even in Bengaluru, one of India's top city for working women.

Having a chance to speak with one of the female Vice President-Marketing of a FMCG group, she mentioned: “the gender gap in India starts right from the birth, of all ages, the gender gap is 100 females for every 107 males, but the situation has improved, we have come a far way, and with rational support and encouragement, we should be able to match the global count.

 According to Gender Diversity Benchmark, 2011, India is quite low on national female labour force and has a really poor leaking pipeline for junior to middle level position women: 28.71% of those at the junior level of the workplace, 14.9% of those at the middle level, and 9.32% of those at the senior level.

The most critical factor as to why Indian women lag behind can be explained as the additional pressure of “daughterly guilt” — the family and societal coerce to take care of parents or in-laws. In India, domestic and familial help is typically available with child care and institutional options for care of elderly are considered culturally unacceptable. So the benefits of child care for a mother are often largely negated by the burdens of elder care. Although, according to a recent research study released by the Center for Talent Innovation, or CTI, a non-profit New York-based think tank, educated Indian women are managing the demands of their careers and family obligations far better than their peers in the West and Japan. The CTI survey revealed that more than one-third (36 percent) of working Indian women left their jobs to take care of their family related issues, a rate similar to those found among American, German and Japanese women.

However, on average, the Indian women returned to their jobs within a year, whereas their counterparts off-ramped for much longer period - almost two years for Germans and nearly three years for Americans.

Where on one hand we lack, on the other we are trying to pace up with the global trend. Indian companies Wipro and Infosys have policies and programs that support working mothers, such as extended maternity leave and on-site child care during school holidays.  Ernst & Young, the accounting giant, has come up with an innovative concept of launching an education campaign for parents and in-laws of female employees to convince them to let the women continue to work. We can be in a stronger position, if other companies take up similar initiatives to support, promote and encourage women to participate in the workforce. 

The “precarious part” is the growing knowledge that women tend to demonstrate distinct leadership attributes than men, they cannot be categorized as better or worse, just different. They have a propensity to be holistic rather than linear thinkers, they tend to negotiate in a win/win style rather than a win/lose manner, they tend to be sensitive to subliminal cues, and comfortable with ambiguity. The corporate vehicle can’t run on just the wheels, it needs fuel too. Both male and female workers shape up the corporate sector and make the game a fair play.  However, in today’s swift paced global environment, which is culturally diverse, and portrayed by omnipresent social, political, and economic uncertainty, female attributes certainly represent the “added value.”