Women Rising

IT's Most Powerful Women was our tribute last year (DQ,
June 30, 2005) to women in the technology industry who had
managed to climb the ladder and rise to the top. Whether it's
Neelam Dhawan of Microsoft or Rekha Menon of Accenture,
Jessie Paul of Wipro, Revathy Kasturi of Novell India (she's
recently moved back to a professional role after founding
Tarang) or Padma Ravichander of Perot Systems, women have
most definitely made their mark in the IT industry.

In 2003, in one of the most-reprinted Dataquest articles ever,

columnist Deepa Kandaswamy had written about “talibanism in technology”: why women have
remained invisible in technology through the ages. “I have found seven reasons,” she wrote,
“social myths, conditioning, media, networking, deterrence, balance and marketing.” So how
relevant is a statement like this today? Says Indrani Ghose, VP, IT, Oberoi Group, “After 17
years in the industry, I think that the glass ceiling for women in technology still exists to a large
extent and it will be a while before people are ready to shed their stero-type images of suitable
jobs for women.”

Breaking the Glass Ceiling

However, many would argue today that this is only one half of the story. Although the
proportion of women remains low as compared to men, the number in hardcore technology
segment and not just the IT industry is slowly rising.

Take for example Padmashree Warrior of Motorola or Jaysree Ullal of Cisco. Warrior has been
recently featured in Fortune as a strong contender for a berth in the listing of the top 50 most
powerful women in global business. Back home we have Radha Shelat who has not just been
the CTO at Veritas Software (now Symantec, after the acquisition) but has almost single-
handedly spearheaded Veritas' India operations till she quit the company this year to join a
Silicon Valley startup in Pune.

While the numbers might be low, they would be significantly higher especially if one compares
with the scenario even a couple of years back. The recently conducted Dataquest-IDC Best
Employers Survey revealed some interesting figures. Around 24% of the workforce in the 32
companies that made it to the second round of the survey were women, which is not a small
proportion. According to industry estimates, IT companies in India employ anything between
10-25% women while ITeS averages at around 35-70%. The average of both IT and ITeS
combined would be around 40%.

Traditionally, the IT industry has been slow as compared to ITeS when it comes to employing
women. Given the huge manpower demand in the BPO industry, ITeS has been quite proactive
when it comes to hiring women. Says Amit Agarwal, hiring leader, Genpact, “Historically, we
have less of a baggage when it comes to hiring women.”
According to industry estimates,
IT companies in India employ “Personally, I can only recall one
20-25% women, while BPO instance of gender discrimination in my
employs over 50%. The average working career to date, when several
across IT and BPO, combined, years ago two male colleagues left the
would be roughly 35% organization I was working with, rather
than report in to a woman boss-me!”
says Neelam Dhawan. However the situation is a lot different today. Today more and more
companies in the IT industry are more consciously practicing gender diversity. Says Ritu
Madbhavi, head of IT at FCB Ulka, “I have never encountered gender bias at the workplace.”
Multinational IT companies are actually spearheading the practice (of apponting women)
primarily because they have already reaped the benefits of the practice. Says C Mahalingam,
senior VP, HR, Symphony Services, “India is slowly opening its eyes to the business benefits of
diversity.”

To Attract and Retain

Today the IT industry is not just doing a lot to attract talent but even to retain it. Attracting
talent is not necessarily confined to attracting the fairer sex but even talent with physical
disability so as to ensure that the workforce within the company reflects the demographic profile
of the market. While facilities are being provided in the form of day-care centers, flexi-timings,
work-from-home options, extended maternity leaves there are conscious efforts to increase the
intake of women during recruitment as well as create leadership development programs to make
sure that quality female talent gets an equal opportunity to climb up the corporate ladder. IBM,
for example, has identified four women-only engineering institutes and ensures that a sizeable
proportion of their recruitment happens from these institutes.

Finally, as the proportion of women in the IT industry is on the rise, the number of technologists
still remains considerably low. Only one (Radha Shelat) of the 10 most profiled last year was a
hard core technologist. The percentage of women in the information technology work force
declined from a high of 41% in 1996 to 32.4% in 2004, according to a report by the Information
Technology Association of America trade group in 2005. The shrinking representation of
women is largely due to the fact that one out of every three women in the IT work force falls
into administrative job categories that have experienced significant overall declines in recent
years. While this is likely to be true in case of IT Inc in India, we see more women today in the
specialized technology domain-which is most definitely very heartening.