Companies Still Not Ready for Women to be at Top Level: Survey

While women are ready to take on the corporate ladder, it seems companies are not. A recent survey has highlighted that only 5% companies actually see women joining the executive level while they have more women at the mid level. TimesJobs did the survey on gender diversity in India- ‘State of Diversity in India Inc’- which covered 860 companies.

It revealed that 40% firms foresee a rise in the number of female employees but very few actually see it happening in top positions. 30% organisations are focused on increasing the representation of women at the mid level and feel that their actions will be more impactful and positive.

“Many organisations still suffer from diversity issues as massive HR potential is lost due to stringent work timings, causing a lack of female talent, primarily at senior levels,” Times Business Solutions Head of Strategy Nilanjan Roy said to Indian Express.

As a solution, Roy also suggested flexible female-centric provisions at work and constant customer branding strategy.

Kanika Tekriwal, the founder of JetSetGo, found out only 3-8 per cent women comprise the total number of people working in private aviation companies. She has set up an initiative to achieve 50 per cent women workforce dream by 2017.

“I have also come to the realisation that a lot of people don’t hire a perfectly qualified person for a certain kind of job just because she is a woman,” opined Kanika matter-of-factly to SheThePeople.TV

She believes that women contribute more to the company than men. “I have had people asking me who will work when she gets pregnant and stuff like that. But I personally believe that women contribute more than men. They are more emotional about their job.”

The report says that 65% employers feel that gender diversity is moderately embodied in their workforce, while 25% think that it is significantly embodied and the rest 10% feel there is no gender diversity in their organisation.

A whopping 55% organisations realise that they do have gender disparity in wage pay and now they are consciously taking steps to eradicate this by giving women other benefits like flexible working hours, targeted opportunities for development, training programmes and support networks.

Lastly, about 40% companies have now set targets to achieve gender diversity in recruitment and promotions and 30% are now going to get started with recruitment programmes and selection processes to increase gender diversity. And 20% are going to create jobs with an effort to add more women to jobs that they find comfortable.

Frankly, the mindset has to change when it comes to hiring a professional. Gender should be a priority. It has been seen that when men at the top level were asked to promote people from mid-level to top level, they could not find a single woman qualified enough. But when women at the top level were asked to do the same, they found so many brilliant women perfect for the job.

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Picture credit- Businessresearcher