Feminism in Corporate World

The gender parity, wage discrimination and gap is pretty much all we talk about when we mention women anywhere on the planet whether it’s New York or New Delhi. India’s number interestingly enough specially in past decade has been held up as an anomaly to some sort of global trends. It’s one of those head scratching topics to say the least, where everyone has the same thought, where India has the lowest participation in the workforce. Now the ILO report suggests that if you close the gender gap in the workforce by 25% then you can increase the GDP by 8 trillion dollars, whereas in India only 24% women contribute to the overall GDP. But here the question lies, what do we need to do to achieve this? Since, there are so many societal issues that make it very difficult for India to reach any goal. We’ve got government policies on one hand and then there are workplace policies that need to be implemented correctly in order for higher women participation. As a start today’s businesses need to be agents of change.

As far as the government is concerned, they can just create policies but is our society willing to adhere to such policies? In companies there needs to be created a holistic environment and nurture some valuable polices for women and have each member of the organisations be sensitive to them for a better work environment and its growth. Take for example the governments initiative to increase maternity leave to six months but to most business leaders and CEO’s this might put them a bit at unease since one might think you are paying an employee without gaining any work from them. But what we don’t consider is the bigger perspective wherein you forget that the cost of training and hiring a new employee would be much greater. Therefore whether at micro or macro level a change in the perspective is required for a holistic growth of a company today. It’s really by the end of the day inside each one of us that we need to bring a change forward and set examples in the society. As a leader in a company one must set strong core principles that are not just good for business but ethical as well. Many studies have previously shown that workplace diversities have given better results for the company but, it all starts with commitment and intention. But as a leader of a company if you do not have the intention in the first place then, it’s not possible to see any change as there is no room for commitment. India, is a very large country in the end and its bigger than 24 countries of Europe therefore the challenges and societal problems are also going to be equally vast. Therefore some parts might outperform the others when it comes to participation of women and similarly some companies might be better in their core values than the others. So by the end of the day, be it, the education factor playing the need of the hour card or the company policies working hand in hand with the government, what India needs is opportunity and more opportunities being widely available in all major aspects of every sector of the workplace.