Women power: The optics and politics

Adherence to gender diversity rules alone is not good enough. To comply with a corporate governance mandate is one thing, but to give opportunity to talented women quite another

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is planning a year-long massive outreach programme to connect with women voters ahead of the many state polls this year and the general election in 2024, according to news reports. The objective is to get in touch with millions of women who are beneficiaries of government schemes. As part of the mega election campaign, the BJP women cadre will be expected to take selfies with the target group and talk about a better life under the current government. Along with appropriate hashtags, the selfies will be posted on social media.

One could argue that Women’s Day, separated from Valentine’s Day by fewer than three weeks, would be a perfect setting to kick off this election outreach programme. But the real question to ask is: Beyond casting their vote and being wooed by parties, where do women stand in what is being celebrated by one and all as India’s decade? Here’s a snapshot. In the Union Cabinet of 28 ministers, only two are women: Nirmala Sitharaman, finance minister; and Smriti Irani, women & child development and minority affairs minister. So, women constitute just about 7 per cent of the Union Cabinet. Out of 47 ministers of state, there are nine women--that’s almost a fifth of the total. There are two ministers of state with independent charge and both are men. To sum it up, out of the council of ministers of 77, there are 11 women or 14.2 per cent of the total.

Even though civil services entrance top rankers —many of them women—occupy a pride of place in advertisements and hoardings of coaching institutes, women rarely rise to the top job(s) in bureaucracy. There’s been no woman cabinet secretary -- the topmost bureaucrat--yet. There have been 32 cabinet secretaries so far, the first being N R Pillai in 1950. The official website of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) lists 13 principal secretaries—all men—starting with PN Haksar in 1971. However, Sarla Grewal headed the PMO secretariat in the early years of the Rajiv Gandhi tenure. While no woman has been appointed defence secretary or home secretary so far in India, Sushma Nath as expenditure secretary was designated finance secretary in 2011. Of the plum bureaucratic postings, three women have made it to the top in the Ministry of External Affairs: Chokila Iyer in 2001, Nirupama Rao in 2009, and Sujatha Singh in 2013 when Jaswant Singh, S M Krishna and Sushma Swaraj were foreign ministers, respectively.

In the current dispensation, there are 16 women secretaries across central ministries out of a total of 93, including the President’s and the Prime Minister's Office. That’s 17.2 per cent of the total and their portfolios are mostly considered “softer” in nature… Among state chief ministers, there’s only one woman — Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal. Of the 32 chief secretaries across states, there are five women:Vandita Sharma in Karnataka, RV Suchiang in Meghalaya, Renu Sharma in Mizoram, Usha Sharma in Rajasthan, and A Santhi Kumari in Telangana. That’s 15.6 per cent of the total and they are mainly in the southern and northeastern states. As for members of Parliament (MPs), 78 out of the 542 members in the Lok Sabha are women (14.3 per cent) and the number is 24 out of 224 in the Rajya Sabha (10.7 per cent). That said, we have a woman President--Droupadi Murmu. This is the second time we have a woman President after Pratibha Patil. We also have a woman chairperson of the Securities & Exchange Board of India--Madhabi Buch Puri. In fact, no other regulator in India has had a woman chief.  

The corporate scene in India hasn’t been quite different and women occupying corner rooms of top companies has not been that common. One of the topmost conglomerates in the country with diverse businesses, for instance, does not have a woman chief executive officer in any of its companies. Having at least one woman in the boardroom—a mandatory provision for listed companies—also is a challenge for many. Global consulting and accounting firm EY, in a report titled “Diversity in the boardroom: progress and the way forward” last year, revealed its findings on representation of women on Indian boards. It said that India stepped up women representation on boards from 6 per cent in 2013 to 18 per cent in 2022. Then it listed out the things that organisations must do to increase gender diversity.

But, gender diversity alone is not good enough. To comply with the corporate governance mandate that a listed company boardroom must have a woman director is one thing, but to give opportunity to talented women to occupy leadership positions in places where it matters is quite another. As the EY report pointed out, while 95 per cent of the Nifty 500 companies have a woman on the board of directors, less than 5 per cent of companies have female chairpersons and that corporate social responsibility committees are where women get to lead quite often. Soft power is seeing its moment of glory in the post-Covid ecosystem, but businesses as well as the government should know better than equating women with soft power and lightweight portfolios in what is acknowledged as India’s decade.