Women with a mission

The Forbes India list of WPower Trailblazers celebrates women

who want to be judged on merit and competence

Gender equality, in Parliament or in the boardroom, is one of those popular

causes on which more is said than done. The Companies Act, 2013, and the
Securities and Exchange Board of India did make it mandatory for all listed
companies to have at least one woman on their boards by April 1, 2015. Is
regulation the only way to inject gender-diversity into boardrooms?
Perhaps. Late last year, Credit Suisse estimated that women now hold about
15 percent of board seats in listed Indian companies, up from 4 percent
three years ago. Barring a handful, most companies that have complied
have just that one woman
on the board.
Such mandated quotas
smack of tokenism, and
we have as many women
who favour reservations
as those who would like
merit to be the decider.
It’s the latter that Forbes
India’s WPower
Trailblazers list of 25
women achievers
celebrates. As Varsha
Meghani—who helmed
this project, which
included drawing up a
longlist of rising stars and
then taking it to a star-
studded, all-women
jury—writes: “This is not
a ranking but a qualitative
selection—a grouping of ground breakers, game changers and innovators
who are shattering stereotypes…” And to settle the quota vs competence
debate, look out for what two lawyers who became the first to be elected
joint managing partners of their law firm have to say. (Hint: It’s not about
gender.)
The 2017-18 Economic Survey devoted a chapter to ‘Gender and Son Meta-
Preference: Is development itself an antidote?’ The ‘meta’ preference refers
to parents having children until they arrive at the desired number of sons.

The bias for sons is one of the few bleak spots in an otherwise brightening
picture of women empowerment. India’s performance has improved on 14
out of 17 indicators. The two areas where India lags are employment and
use of female-controlled reversible contraception. All the three may be
linked.

The survey notes that women’s employment has declined over time. And
nearly 47 percent of women do not use contraception; of those who do, less
than a third use female-controlled reversible contraception. The link
between contraception and employment: As women have little control over
when they start having children, the years in which they should be getting
an education and employment are wasted. And the ‘meta’ preference results
in girls having fewer resources dedicated to them.

The Economic Survey has described this as the “somewhat unequal contest
between the irresistible forces of development and the immovable objects
that are cultural norms…”

Perhaps those mores are changing. What else would explain hard-hatted
women on shopfloors traditionally hardwired to have men in occupations
like deep-hole drilling in open-cast mines; or women making axles for
rugged SUVs that smack of machismo? Don’t miss Kathakali Chanda’s
feature on how more and more women are putting their nose to the
grindstone at some of India’s biggest manufacturing companies.

Remember the Lehman Sisters hypothesis, which posited that if more

women ran the financial sector, the Wall Street crisis wouldn’t have
happened? Back home, when the public sector banking (PSB) space seems
riddled with holes, you wonder whether more women would help put a lid
on the skeletons tumbling out. Yes, like in politics, Indian banking has its
share of high-profile women leaders. But they’re still cogs in giant wheels
within wheels. The rot in the PSB system is deep and wide—and it’s a male-
infested abyss.

To Check Out The Full 2018 W-Power Trailblazers List, Click Here

To Read The Overview of the 2018 W-Power Trailblazers List, Click Here
Best,
Brian Carvalho
Editor, Forbes India
Email:Brian.Carvalho@nw18.com
Twitter id:@Brianc_Ed

(This story appears in the 16 March, 2018 issue of Forbes India. You can
buy our tablet version from Magzter.com. To visit our Archives, click
here.)

http://www.forbesindia.com/article/column/women-with-a-mission/49549/1