Friday 28 December 2012

IT’S THE WAY FORWARD!

Have you ever wondered why, though women have proven their mettle time and again by making their presence felt on the boards of different organizations, their ability is often questioned? Some question their strength, some their commitment, while others question their ability to perform professionally vis-à-vis their male counterparts. Women have been facing the ‘glass ceiling’ effect ever since they tried venturing into the male dominated work arena.

Though higher educational levels and falling fertility rates have contributed to women’s increasing participation in the work force of India and the situation of women is changing with more and more women not just getting educated in general streams but also in technical and professional courses, yet this change is not wholesome as there are still innumerable barriers that women face when trying to climb the corporate ladder. Today although women’s entry into management profession has increased yet their climb to the top within various types of organizations has not been smooth. The number of women that actually reach the top shrinks. But why is this? What happens to women as they begin to climb the corporate ladder to success? Why are they not making it to the top? It is observed that women are graduating and entering management positions but there is a bottleneck at middle management levels. While entry is easier, progression slows. Progression is dependent on a number of factors. The factors can be categorized under individual, societal and organizational factors. The ‘glass ceiling’ can be felt in more ways than one. For instance, women’s under representation at the corporate hierarchy, gendered wage gap, discriminative corporate policies, lack of attention to the speci ic needs women have, or exclusion of women from informal networks. They also face another ceiling called the ‘hour glass ceiling’, which means they are discriminated based on the number of hours that they work for. All this contributes to women lacking the con idence and attitude that is needed to succeed in business or work.

The major barrier for promotion of women managers comes from insensitivity of the corporates towards women’s social roles and responsibilities. If companies are serious about bringing in greater diversity in their management and want to encourage competent women to overcome the hurdles that society places in their career path, they should implement the following changes - develop career planning policies including mentoring and leadership development programmes for women as part of a company’s overall corporate strategy. Mentoring plays an important role in the advancement of women into management positions. However, mentoring is often limited for women, which in turn results in a lack of access to training and career development activities. Mentoring inspires a sense of responsibility across levels. Companies should establish leadership training explicitly for newly recruited women managers. The leading global IT company, Zensar has an interactive forum called ‘WE’ – Women For Excellence. This is a forum for Zensar’s women employees to help foster leadership in women employees and encourage them to break the barrier and realize their true potential.

Companies should identify highpotential women early on in their careers, involve them in decisionmaking and provide them with opportunities to lead high pro ile projects so that they build their competencies and skill-sets to ascend to the upper levels of the company. Renault-Nissan CEO, Carlos Ghosn, said “ I have started now using more and more inputs from women employees while designing the cars. The needs of men and women are different and when women look at cars they go for design, color and comfort. We are increasingly looking at hiring more women.” Talking about women taking maternity leave, he said, “ In a career of let’s say 15 years, if a woman takes a year off, its perfectly ine. You can’t let go a good worker simply because she is giving birth to a child.

Organizations should accommodate women to enable them to strike the right work-family balance. Family support strongly contributes to the career aspirations of women. Companies should adopt best practices such as options to work in lexi-timings, work from home and transport facilities. Microsoft’s programme ‘Springboard’ provides women who have taken career breaks an opportunity to hone technical skills, besides offering attractive monthly compensation through the duration of the project and then join as a full-time employee at the end of the programme. The company tries to persuade women techies who have taken a career break for personal reasons such as marriage or childbirth to come back to work. The company offers reskilling and mentoring, lexible working hours, and an option to work from home or any other tailor-made solution that techie moms demand. A similar initiative is driven by PepsiCo India in a tie up with Job Street. It reaches out to career women who have taken a break in their careers. It provides access to talent that is not currently present in the active workforce. The initiative has not only worked well but has also helped win the con idence of potential female talent that adds to the richness of diverse work culture. To support such diversity, they also offer special provisions like sabbaticals, lexible timing and other support to women with young children or family responsibilities.

The success stories of few women making it to the top does give us a ‘feel good factor’ as it provides an impression that position and status of women is changing in Indian management sector. But in the real sense how many of these breakthroughs are really happening? Barring a handful like ICICI Bank, PepsiCo and Biocon, majority of Indian boardrooms are still ‘un touchable’ areas for women. Companies need to be more responsive and should create situation where men and women are treated with equal dignity. Corporates need to be more open to women leaders who have the ability to cut through a male dominated work place, and make their own mark. Yes, there are few companies who are trying to get the balance right. IBM has a policy of offering special incentives to recruitment consultants for getting capable women professionals into the organization. Motorola has increased its women workforce to 37%. The IT Company, CSC, offers incremental bonus to employees for referring women employees on board.

Every woman is capable of reaching the top of her organization. What sets women such as Indra Nooyi, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Monica Oswal and Chanda Kochchar apart from the rest of the similarly talented women? They went ahead and shattered the glass ceiling with a high level of sustained self con idence and emotional quotient, persistence and patience, an extremely supportive family and the most important thing - right mentors at various stages of their career. They had the courage and the determination to shatter the glass ceiling and create a mark for them. Each one of them, a pioneer and innovator in her own right, has not only nurtured families but also met deadlines with a desirable spirit. Each one of them has a unique story to share – a success story that is aweinspiring and tells us the way forward as I elaborated earlier.

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