From drafting gender-neutral job descriptions to eradicating the disproportionate X plus Y-level efficiency tax on girls after they attain the highest, Rao outlines a blueprint for enabling girls to navigate the hurdles in the Indian management panorama.
Sharing insights into the agenda: ‘Hiring Trends for Women: Building a pipeline of women leadership’, Rao was talking with Miloni Bhatt, Editor – Digital Broadcast, EconomicTimes.com in the ET Prime Conversation collection, as a part of the ETPWLA 2023 programme. Currently in its fourth version, ETPWLA is India’s most illustrious awards conferred upon present-day and next-generation girls leaders, who personify the spirit of excellence in enterprise, entrepreneurship, innovation, and management.
Through a collection of anecdotes, Rao paints an image of the good Indian patriarchy or the paradigm of gendered labour woven into the nation’s socio-cultural DNA—which has traditionally demanded girls’s unpaid home labour and caregiving duties. Rao reveals how a deeply ingrained thought of a home construction nonetheless continues to exert its toll on girls’s private and skilled lives even in an period the place we’re speaking about championing girls COOs and CEOS, and investing in a pipeline of ladies management.
“Despite being a COO of a Rs 7,000-8,000-crore revenue organisation, a woman is still expected to make breakfast at home in the morning. Of course, there are exceptions; there are women COOs who will not do this. However, the majority is depicted by this particular example. Societal support is very important for women to continue in their careers,” emphasised Rao on the digital fireplace chat.
Decoding obstacles to champion girls in management positions
Here are a number of the key takeaways from Rao’s broader image of how such unconscious biases and structural obstacles forestall girls from becoming a member of the workforce, and particularly surviving in the workforce and rising to management roles:
- India and the paradigm of ladies in STEM: Although a big part of ladies graduate in science, know-how, engineering, arithmetic (STEM) fields, solely a small variety of girls are represented in jobs, and even fewer in management positions. Rao says it’s crucial to look into the social background of our nation in order to decode this paradox, particularly given the backdrop that in the final 15-20 years, girls college students have been faring higher than males academically, and busting the mathematics-and-men delusion.
Even although they do properly in schooling, as and after they progress in their profession, girls are beneath strain to get married. And even when girls be part of the workforce, they’re typically pressured to surrender their careers halfway. “If you talk about the upper and mid-sized companies in India, there has been a conscious effort at their end to encourage women to come back to work. Women, today, are quite successful in various startups as well … So, there is a change taking place, more so in the multinationals and very gradually within Indian companies as well. However, the change is more visible at the ground level, you don’t see them (women) at the top levels yet,” says Rao.
- The Great Indian Leadership bias: A research by staffing agency CIEL HR exclusively for ET (Though there are three women for every 10 employees in India Inc, only one makes it to the leadership team of 10) revealed that there’s only one woman in the leadership team of 10. “If you look at the CIEL HR study—it covers the micro industries and the small industries. For a moment, let’s leave out the small industries from our scope. Now, if we look at the mid-sized level—say Rs 3,000-to-4,000 crore revenues and outputs—these companies have put in a lot of effort to hire women. I won’t say leaders; I would say women candidates,” explains Rao.
And, yet, despite strong initiatives to improve diversity ratios by hiring more women, are corporates failing to retain them in the mid-to-senior levels?
“Unfortunately, there is an unconscious bias in our system against women even though, today, many corporates pay lip service to the diversity agenda … They tend to tick a few boxes,” Rao weighs in.
Progressive measures in place, still a long road to diversity
Rao highlights the progressive measures being implemented by a section of Indian organisations, especially in the spectrum of new Indian companies or mid-sized Indian companies:
- Gender sensitisation programmes: Organisations are creating in-house programmes for both men and women to fight latent biases.
- Gender-neutral job descriptions: Some organisations are also specifically making efforts to create gender-neutral job descriptions.
- Educating senior leadership: When a woman reaches a top position, she needs to be more guarded than a man because she’s likely to be judged by the men around her. So, they’re educating the senior leadership also how to deal with unconscious biases.
- Removing X plus Y-level performance expectation: When a woman needs to be promoted; she has to perform at an X plus Y level. Whereas a man can perform at an X level and get the same job. So, they’re taking steps to remove this bias or remove this disproportionate X plus Y-level performance expectation from women.
Rao sums up by stressing upon the significance of educating senior leaders, correcting a deep-rooted sexist mindset, and facilitating support systems for women to champion diversity beyond token representation. This is especially important, he says, as organisations, today, are looking at leadership through the prism of succession planning where along with diversity hiring, building a women leadership pipeline is increasingly being seen as critical to the future of work.
Catch the full interview here.
The ET Prime Conversation series, as part of the ET Prime Women Leadership Awards, is among EconomicTimes.com’s diversity and inclusion initiatives. The ET Prime Women Leadership Awards, India’s most prestigious awards conferred to women leaders and changemakers, is another key diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative by the EconomicTimes.com to celebrate women leaders and changemakers driving change and impact across various fields. You can learn more about the programme here.