Women MBA graduates looking for recognition in business domain - By Gargi Ghosh from FSM, Delhi

All MBA aspirants look forward to their B-school experience, the kind of people they’ll be exposed to and the level of diversity richness they will come across. However, this isn’t possible if women are not present. Many IIMs have earlier been cited for having fewer women students since the 2013 batch. But the situation has improved since 2019 with the percentage of women in top tier b-schools rising.

The overall proportion of women students in IIMs is 1/3rd of the total batch of 2020-22, with IIM Kozhikode bagging the title of the topper with 52% women. The share of diversity in the batch has shown a growth of 27% from last year.

These changes were fueled by the efforts of the management of these B-schools. Prof Amit Mishra, Chairperson, Admissions of IIM Bangalore says that women have been performing exceptionally well in managerial and leadership positions by displaying qualities like empathy & multitasking. This helps them bag roles not based on the gender criteria alone. However, it is still a long way to go if we look at the share of women in Ivy league schools like Kellogg's (40%), Wharton's (41%) and Yale (39%) to name a few.

The above table shows the percentage of women in the given 5 Indian B-Schools.

How female-friendly are top firms?

The corporate sector has played a major role in improving the participation of women in the workforce. This push has been translated into higher gender diversity in B-schools. The demand for certain skill sets seen in women is driving high recruitment of women even in the absence of diversity & inclusion policy. According to a survey by Forte Foundation, women hold only 17% of the boardroom & 4.8% of the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) roles. This dire percentage is making the corporates realize the importance of having women in senior leadership positions and as board members.

The trend of hiring women showed a pleasant growth of 23% from 2017 to 2019 while 2020 saw a dip in the first quarter (31%) and then recovered by 25 percentage points by the next quarter. According to a report by TOI, the greatest concentration of employable women is in Vishakhapatnam, Ghaziabad & Hyderabad.

A significant percentage of women are pursuing MBA degrees as a way of restarting their careers after a long break or maybe to reskill themselves after working in one role for a while. A lot of Indian B-Schools have tailormade opportunities for such women. SP Jains’ PGPM-W program is one such program. The government has its own initiative to increase corporate diversity like the Companies Act mandating Indian organizations to have at least 1 woman member on the board.

Women entrepreneurs lead the wagon

With trailblazers like Falguni Shah, founder of the e-commerce business Nykaa & IIM Ahmedabad alumni, female MBA graduates are keener to shatter the glass ceiling and follow their entrepreneurial dream. As per a survey by mba.com, there has been a rise of 38% in the number of women MBA graduates who want to start their own business globally.

Despite these examples, women in India are still facing a lot of challenges with respect to starting their own business. One of the major reasons that can be attributed to the challenges that women MBA graduates is fitting in male dominated sectors like engineering and manufacturing. Women sometimes have to struggle to be taken seriously at the workplace and the startup culture is no surprise either. Other challenges include keeping a work-life balance. Women often find it difficult to devote enough time to handle the immense workload in the first few years of creating a startup. These major challenges often deter the female MBA graduates from pursuing their startup venture.

What lies in the future?

Even though corporates and B-Schools are following global trends to have more women in the business domain, India still must tackle several bottlenecks like the pay gap and workplace harassment. India ranks 117th in wage equality according to the Gender gap index. These wage gaps are caused by societal stereotypes which assume that women will leave their jobs after parental leave. According to a survey conducted by Indian Bar association, 70% women don’t report sexual harassment at workplace.

These are among the few challenges that India still must battle to increase women inclusion in business so that the true meaning of Inclusion and diversity are upheld in the Indian business domain.

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