Gender disparity in boardrooms: A global and local perspective

The purpose of this paper is to understand the global & local dynamics pertaining to underrepresentation of women in boardrooms. Special focus is on India. Thereafter, effort has been made to unravel the factors qualifying as ‘enablers‘, built as recommendations, in the career progression of women managers. This is reviewed in Indian context with global statistics at the backdrop.

Some initiatives have been identified that are already taken by government, organizations and individuals. The affect, however, is not quite satisfactory. This study is significant as it attempts to explore further, the initiatives to be taken in this direction. These facilitators, collated after extensive literature review, are relevant in today‘s scenario as women in India prepare themselves for a level playing field.

When it comes to women representation in boards, global figures fare better as compared to the Indian numbers. Hence some of the best practices studied on the global horizon have been picked up to build recommendations for the career progression of women in India.

This paper tries to highlight some of the factual statistics as an eye opener to the fact of gender disparity in boardroom both in India and around the world. The current measures that have been taken towards improving ‘diversity’ in organizations, merely touch upon the ‘representation’ part of it. However, if women are not included in true sense, then this diversity has no meaning. During the course of this study, an effort is made to sensitize the organizations and society towards their role of creating equal opportunities for people irrespective of their gender. To substantiate the facts and figures incorporated in this study, references of various newspaper reports have been included along with actual views of some corporate leaders, thereby giving it a practical outlook.

This study has implications for government and management bodies to take care of various dimensions which affect the rise of women managers to senior levels.