Women empowerment through corporate social responsibility-the role of Indian Commercial Banks

The issue of inclusive and sustainable growth is very decisive, considering the disproportionate allocation of wealth and widening gap between the prosperity of the rich and the plight of the poor. The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities have started since 1990s now has become a medium for most of Indian corporate to contribute to inclusive growth of Indian society. Besides the private sector, the government is also ensuring that the public sector companies participate actively in CSR initiatives by spending 2–5 per cent of their net profits. The new Companies Bill also made it compulsory to spend 2 per cent of net profit of the company towards CSR activities. Hence, the Indian Corporate needs to shift their focus beyond health and education schemes to the other areas including Electricity Generation, Environmental Issues, Biodiversity Protection, Employee Engagement, Gender Equality and many social-awareness programmes. The present paper focuses on how CSR extends beyond the traditional business to encompass new governmental and social drivers and emphasised on the gender content of CSR in banking sector for the inclusive growth since development and empowerment of women ultimately imperative for the inclusive growth of the nation. But it was found from the study that a very few banks have included women empowerment content as CSR major content. Hence it is suggested to increase the content towards women empowerment and gender equality so as to fulfil both CSR standards as well as inclusive growth. The study also emphasised on the comparison of CSR content among different ownership patterns of Indian Commercial Banks in the era of competitive globalisation towards inclusive growth.