Women hold only 15% of C-suite roles in India, far below the global average of 25%

Almost one out of every seven C-suite roles are held by women in India, far lower than most of the key economies including France, the UK, the US, and the overall global average of 25 percent.

While in India, 15 percent C-suite roles are held by women, it is 27 percent in the US, 33 percent in Singapore, 25 percent each in South Africa and the UK, 24 percent in France and 19 percent in Germany, according to data shared by professional networking platform LinkedIn on July 13.

While climbing up the seniority ladder, the share of women holding key corporate positions drops in India and elsewhere.  For example, at the entry level, 46 percent of roles globally are held by women. But this drops to 35 percent at the managers’ level and 25 percent at the C-suite level, the platform said.

This is a global reality and in India, the situation is even worse. For example, while at the entry level, 28 percent of roles are held by women, this drops to 18 percent at the middle management level and 17 percent at the VP level in India.

Compare this with France, it stands 49 percent at the entry level and 26 percent at the VP level. The VP and leadership level has been pegged a step below the C-suite level positions.

“Women are more underrepresented the higher you go up the seniority ladder,” LinkedIn said. “Women get stuck even before they reach the first level of management. The pipeline of potential women leaders is being curtailed even at the early career stages. This gap only continues to widen the higher up the seniority ladder you go,” it added.

The barriers for women start as early as the manager level. Globally, the representation of women between senior individual contributor and manager drops by nine percentage points, it added.

Sectoral view

Globally, no industry has reached parity in leadership roles. Although more than half of the workforce are women in industries like education, wellness and fitness, there still remains a gap in women in leadership.

Looking at industries that have been historically dominated by men, such as construction and manufacturing, the gap is even greater and not even two out of 10 leaders are women. This is not just an issue with hiring more women in general. The leadership imbalance needs to be specifically tackled.

Women and men in leadership roles list different skills on their profiles, even when they work in the same industry. Men list technical skills more often, whereas women tend to showcase their soft skills, business skills and skills that are specialised to their industry. These differences are likely a combination of different skill sets and different prioritisation of skill sets between genders.

Board roles

Just not in C-suite positions, even board seats held by women in Indian companies have been low though things have started to look better comparatively.

Board seats held by women in Indian companies had gone up to 17.1 percent in 2021 from 13.8 percent in 2018, and at least 4.7 percent of chief executive officers and 3.9 percent of chief financial officers were women, consulting and auditing company Deloitte India had said in February.

But the number of women occupying the chairperson’s position has gone down recently. Only 3.6 percent of board chairpersons were women in 2021, against 4.5 percent in 2018. The comparative figures were 3.2 percent in 2016 and 2.7 percent in 2014.