Gender imbalances continue to prevail in corporate boardrooms across the world, but the situation is much better in India if the number of women CEOs that India Inc has is any indication–nearly four times more than that of the US–a survey says. According to a survey by international executive research firm, EMA Partners International, around 11% of Indian companies have women CEOs, while in the case of Fortune 500 list from the US, the women CEOs just account for three% of the total consideration set. “In the backdrop of the Fortune 500 numbers, the Indian results certainly look a lot better, though on a standalone basis, it is clear that barring financial services, other industries have a long way to catch up,” EMA Partners chairman James Douglas said in the survey.
The Times of India: According to a study by Standard Chartered Bank about women on corporate boards in India, the financial sector performs best in terms of gender diversity, nine of the eleven banks listed on BSE-100 have a woman on their board and two of these banks have a female CEO. In fact, through the recent recession, Reserve Bank of India had two women deputy governors on board, Usha Thorat and Shyamala Gopinath.
Women leaders in banking
ICICI Bank, India’s second largest bank after State Bank of India, is headed by a woman, Chanda Kochhar. So is the third largest in the private sector, Axis Bank, with Shikha Sharma at its helm. HDFC Ltd, India’s largest housing finance group has Renu Sud Karnad as its managing director; Kalpana Morparia heads the Indian arm of global financial leviathan JPMorgan Chase & Co; Meera Sanyal is the country executive for Royal Bank of Scotland and; Manisha Girotra is the managing director of Union Bank of Switzerland‘s India operations.
“Women are not driven by wanting to just show numbers,” says Karnad, who feels the recession was a result of excesses, of wanting to achieve goals at whatever cost. “Women are more practical and moderate in risk taking.”
So what is it that makes women so successful in the Indian banking and financial services industry? “Retail banking is more of a relationship thing and women excel at that,” says Karnad. In the Indian context, while women have started venturing out to work in the corporate world, they have been handling relationships at home too, as a wife or a mother. “This nurturing and adjusting attitude flows into the workplace as well.”
The mid-80s saw a number of smart women graduating from the B-schools just when the Indian banking sector was starting to grow. ICICI, HDFC, HSBC, Citibank, were all expanding and were hiring during the mid-80s and the early 90s.
“We were fortunate to have senior role models like Tarjani Vakil, chairperson of Exim Bank who pierced the glass ceiling in the 1970s and ’80s,” says Meera Sanyal, who started her career in the mid-’80s with ANZ Grindlays Bank and is now Royal Bank of Scotland’s country executive for India.
ICICI particularly nurtured a number of women—Chanda Kochhar, Shikha Sharma, Renuka Ramnath—who have today reached the top. One of most prominent among them is Kochhar, who joined the bank as a management trainee in 1984 and rose through the ranks to become the managing director and chief executive officer. Today, of the eleven top executives working directly under her, three are women. “I give a lot of credit to ICICI, which as an organisation has allowed women to grow, prosper, handle responsibilities and offered equal opportunities,” says Kochhar. Of the overall 40,000 employees at ICICI, a quarter are women. “It has contributed a lot to the feminine quotient in the Indian banking sector.”
Additional Sources: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshowpics/6584055.cms
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