Creating Equality: The Female Leadership Factor

Mere pas maa hai. When India’s musical maestro A.R. Rahman quoted one of Bollywood’s most famous lines in his Oscar acceptance speech last year, the significance of his words was not lost on the millions of Indians watching. Translated literally, it means “I have my mother.” But the phrase meant a lot more; celebrating the role of a woman in his success and symbolising the woman-power that has quietly influenced the path of Indian history.

Today, we are fortunate to be witnessing the unprecedented spread of this power beyond traditional roles and domestic confines – in politics, government, technology, even sports. Yet, sadly, it is still woefully missing in business leadership, with women comprising just 5 per cent of senior management positions.

According to statistics, while the male-female ratio at the entry level in many organizations is balanced, a large number of women exit the workplace as they rise up to middle management, leaving behind a largely male dominated workplace.

The reason, I believe, is a fundamental point that corporations seem to miss. Very few women, particularly in India, abandon the crucial role they play on the home front – that of bringing up a child and nurturing a family - for the lure of professional success. To be sure, occasionally men will play the primary role in raising children. And, as some women in our organization have pointed out to me, having children – or taking the lead in raising them – may not be a priority for all women. Still, at the moment and at least in India, women often see this role, by necessity and preference, as theirs.

It is the importance of this value-system that must be accorded due respect in business.

It’s quite simple really. The currency of today’s workplace is largely defined and designed for men. To utilize our female resources optimally, a workplace needs to meet the needs not only of men but of the multi-faceted role of women.

At the recent India Economic Summit organized by the World Economic Forum, I was invited to participate in a panel discussion called “Creating Equality: The Female Leadership Factor.”

The point we were debating was whether the successful use of quotas to improve women’s participation in Indian politics should be adopted as a practice in the corporate world. The consensus was No – as quotas could result in sub-optimal recruits. Diversity targets instead of quotas were seen as a better way to recruit more women.

Before I delve deeper, I think it is important to step back here and remember that the problem runs far deeper. It begins with the fact that in many places in India, the girl child still does not get equal access to education. So although we are discussing the work place, the change has to really begin at the primary school level. And this sensitivity and fairness should then lead their way forward.

Coming back to the workplace, I think there should be a little of both - diversity targets and quotas. In the US, minorities and women were in the same situation years ago. If it had not been changed via quotas, that first group might not have secured jobs that then created the ripple effect. Sure, some take advantage, but the pendulum must swing both ways before you can settle in the middle.

The real problem though, much more than recruiting talented women, is retaining them. To hold on to this valuable resource, companies have to rewrite the rules of their workplace so that all employees, but women in particular, can continue to contribute to the enterprise while having the flexibility to devote themselves to their personal priorities at various life stages. By failing to acknowledge and accommodate the tough choices women sometimes have to make between the personal and the professional, companies end up the losers.

Like A.R. Rahman, and most Indians, I have been deeply influenced by my mother. Whatever I am today is because of her. And now, I am increasingly influenced by my teenage daughter. To me, she symbolizes the generation of bright young girls and women who hold the key to our future and is core to every step I take today.

So, while in 2005, the transformational journey of “Employee First, Customer Second” at HCL Technologies began with the thought ‘Is this the company that my children would want to work in?’ it has now evolved further to ‘Is this the organization that my daughter will want to work in?’