Women Leadership in India- A Conceptual Reflection

Tina Bhat
With the changing social and cultural patterns of the society, there has been an ongoing shift to promote greater gender diversity as an organisational strategy acting as a key corporate performance driver for attaining the competitive edge. Further, organisational culture in India is largely dominated by men being considered as more focussed and career oriented. As women participation in leadership positions start increasing, women leaders continue to build efficacious leadership skills so as to thrive with compassion, empathy and cooperation in order to compete in a masculine work environment.
Indian women that constitutes 40 percent of the students enrolled in the several professional institutes including science and engineering, management, medicine, legal studies, aeronautical, etc. are expecting rewarding career opportunities in private sectors rather than emphasising the security of lower-paid jobs in education or government service. They are moving into operations, sales, technical, finance, marketing and other domains. As a result of the social transformation, ambitious mindset and lifestyle of the society, many middle class families, especially in the large urban cities have started realizing that their aspirations to a higher standard of living is closely associated with having their daughters and daughters-in-law who are well educated and can contribute significantly to the family income. There is an increasing involvement of women not only as corporate leaders but also as social scientists, doctors, engineers, academicians, lawyers, entrepreneurs etc. Indian women are managing with difficulty to negotiate their survival through an wide array of dictatorial and harsh patriarchal family set ups, relationship to men through family of origin, wedlock’s, procreation as well as patriarchal attributes. Therefore, the perspective that usually dominates is based on the fact that women are unable to manage the perfect equilibrium among their personal and professional front. They lose their career momentum after maternity. Indian nation represents the culture where women are given the crown of being ‘ruler’ at home. While performing their dual roles, it is perceived that they give utmost priority to their family that negatively impacts their performance gaps in their career growth ladder. While highlighting the issues and complexities being faced by the women leaders, most of the corporate founders usually face a conflicting opinion that there is the scarcity of efficient women leaders in the present global corporations, whereas, in contrary, women leaders believe that the corporations do not follow transparent performance evaluation measurements.
A study conducted by Harvard Business Review (2019) reveals that women in leadership positions are perceived as effective as men. In fact, they have proved themselves to be more competent when compared with men on the basis of various key leadership capabilities encompassing resilience, integrity, initiative, collaboration, networking, creativity, problem solving etc. Accordingly,social stereotypes that women are not meant to lead in senior level positions have serious consequences on their career. Thus, it is imperative that organisations transform the recruitment and promotional decisions so as to ensure that eligible women are given serious consideration.
Women can be advanced into leadership roles by strengthening a system that encourages educating them about the global leadership proficiencies through a set up that encourages career development, diversity and work life balance to help achieve organizational goals. Such developmental initiatives enable women leaders to enhance their knowledge, proficiencies and abilities required to lead corporations in a global environment leading to greater growth resulting into aggregated revenues as MNC’s deploy their unique talent mix and expertise of women in the workforce. Also, there has been a significant attitudinal change in the men towards their women counterparts and assume leadership positions within global organizations.
Although, India is known as a rising economy in the global market, women continue to experience numerous challenges in pursuing leadership opportunities as well as executing in leadership positions across sectors including manufacturing, services, academic administration etc. In order to thrive in male dominated organisational culture, women go the extra mile to become super women by moving against the wind of predefined norms and following their passion. However, based on the foregoing discussion, the below mentioned are some of the factors hindering women from progressing and expansion of women’s career listed below:
Organisational culture: The cultural practices promoting gender insensitive practices in recruitment, selection, promotion, retention etc. significantly contribute towards the absence of women at the corner of the office. Further, the social environment of an organisation is mostly dominated by men. With the increase in women executives across sectors, they tend to adopt behaviours and/peculiarities similar to their male counterparts so as to thrive in the masculine work environment.
Workplace Relationships: Association of women executives with their mentors, bosses, and other fellow mates is the major challenge. Women are inhibited in the workplace because of their limited access to capable mentors. Many people prefer to have mentors of the same gender because they tend to understand the challenges most commonly faced. On the other hand, men do not face such barriers and at the same time simply do not want to mentor a woman believing women to be more emotional and not as skilled at problem-solving and because of the risk of workplace sexual harassment issues.
Globalization: Globalization presents many new barriers for women at middle and senior level management as they possess more responsibility and higher expectations than before. Business relocations require top executives to move to new towns, cities, and nations. This presents a large barrier for many women with families and a working spouse or significant other. Similarly, women may also experience resistance in other cultures to women leadership.
Intrinsic Motivation: Many women lose their drive to excel due to many obstacles in their career progression. These obstacles include discrimination, stereotyping, prejudice, family demands, and lack of opportunities.
Life-style Conflicts: In many cases women managers faces dual role conflicts. The changing job demands, promotion may forces many women to choose between family and career. Very few women CEOs and women executives prefer to have children due to the affect it would have on their career. Conversely, many women have voluntarily left their jobs due to family decisions. On the other hand, there has been a sharp decline in the percentage of women who leave their jobs once they have children. Also, once a woman has children she is not much reluctant to travel and work long hours due to their responsibilities at home further hindering her promotion likelihood.
Stereotyping and Leadership Styles: Many organisations consider masculine characteristics such as assertiveness, aggressiveness etc. as a part of success and achievement. Whereas, women are perceived to be modest, quiet, selfless. As such, these modest characteristics may be seen as non- executive material. Entities desire a leader who will execute, take criticism, and perform to the best of his abilities.
Marital Status Bias: Further, employers may be biased against married women as well as unmarried women in perceptions pertaining to employability that may further impact important decisions pertaining to promotions, lay off etc. Also, it is believed that single unmarried women possess fewer social responsibilities and are expected to perform for longer hours than married working women whereas, on the other hand, employers consider married men’s employability more favourable as compared to unmarried men. It is believed that with the increase in the financial responsibilities after marriage, men tend to exhibit increased stability, dedication, and commitment for their job profiles. Significantly, thus, marital status bias continues to exist as one of the major challenges being faced by women in India.
To conclude, Women’s Leadership in India despite a deep rooted patriarchal culture, it is quite paradoxical that India has produced innumerable women leaders over the years including Indira Gandhi, the first female Prime Minister of India; Pratibha Patil, the first female President of India; Kiran Bedi, the first female Inspector General of police in India; Indira Nooyi, the first woman and first person of Indian descent to lead Pepsi Co. and Chitra Ramakishna, the first woman CEO of the National Stock Exchange, India’s leading stock exchange. These women leaders continue to be role models for all aspiring young Indian women as they have scaled the top of their careers and left their imprint on the newer generation of women leaders. A greater proportion of Indian women employees are in top leadership positions compared with their counterparts in other parts of the world.