More women enter auto manufacturing as Tata Motors, Hero, MG accelerate gender diversity drive

Another Indian automotive firm, Bajaj Auto which has an all-women line of manufacturing high-end bikes like Dominar 400 and Pulsar RS 200 at its Chakan plant, in Pune has seen women employee strength grow more than four times from 148 in FY14 to 667 in FY22. Almost 64 per cent of women are working in manufacturing plants and in engineering, according to the company's annual report for 2021-22.

"While companies have put in place a comprehensive framework to encourage women to hold key positions, the figures show that there is a wide gap between the idealised criteria and reality," Tata Motors President & Chief Human Resources Officer, Ravindra Kumar told PTI.

With an eye on reducing the gap, Tata Motors is taking steps in its own ways. The company's Pune passenger-vehicles plant has seen a nearly 10 times increase over the past two years of its women workforce, with an increase from 178 workers in April 2020 to 1,600 as of now, he said.

"We have also undertaken the challenging task of building a shop in Pune that entirely comprises a women workforce," Kumar added.

At MG Motor India, women are deployed in critical manufacturing areas, paint quality and surface testing, research and development (R&D), assembly and played a key role in the rollout of the company's first model in India, SUV Hector from its Halol plant in Gujarat.

When the company inaugurated in September 2017 the Halol manufacturing unit, which it had acquired from General Motors, it chose to apply the 'maximum diversity' principle in hiring completely fresh candidates for the unit. Since then, it has been consistent with its hiring strategy based on diversity, with 34 per cent of employees at the shop-floor now women.

"Amongst MG's workforce, women are active change-makers and can be seen leading several departments. However, despite featuring one of the highest gender diversity ratios in the automobile industry, it is our continuous endeavor to achieve the perfect 50:50 ratio," MG Motor India Director-HR Yeshwinder Patial said.

As for Hero MotoCorp, a company spokesperson said through its initiative 'Project Tejaswini', the company has "increased the number of women employees on its shop floor, changed mindsets, and made the manufacturing workplace more holistic - inline with its larger vision." Hero MotoCorp is also a signatory to the UN Women & UN Global Compact's initiative - Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs), which offer guidance on how to promote gender equality and women empowerment in the workplace, the spokesperson pointed out.

When asked about the challenges in having more women in the workforce at factories, Kumar of Tata Motors said, "The automobile industry has been a male-dominated sector since its inception, and the concept of women technicians, sales women, and engineers joining the fold seemed like a distant dream." Since FY16-17, the number of women on the shop floor has witnessed a gradual rise and today Tata Motors has over 3,000 women operating on the shop floor across all its plants." Tata Motors took up several initiatives such as its "Kaushalya" programme, that offers its women employees two-three years comprehensive training and formal education to those who come from different parts of India after their 12th standard or ITI qualification.

Enhancing gender balance across operations and echelons of the automotive sector will certainly lead to better decisions and more innovative ideas, Kumar concluded.