Areas like Cyber Security still see a smaller percentage of women associates

Arati Ranade, Senior Director, OneAsia - Fujitsu

“Many organizations support gender diversity programs as a tick mark exercise. There is a definite need to do more. Teams that have been successful follow some simple practices like questioning lack of nomination of diversity candidates in the hiring or promotion process. Looking at attendance of women in the learning and development programs or assigning mentors is equally critical for the growth of women leaders. I was pleasantly surprised when recently I attended an executive program in Tokyo and 70% of the attendees were women. All of them held senior positions and were clearly nominated based on merit and not just gender. To me this seemed like a big shift. A classic case of organizations’/ industry’ commitment moving from thoughts to actions.

In its strategic review of the industry around March 2022, NASSCOM noted that women’s representation in the tech industry in India lies at 36%. This is a significant improvement in the last decade, but a lot of that is in the IT sector and not in all the technology sectors. Even within IT, areas like Cyber Security see a smaller percentage of women associates. The mindset of the parents and society at large needs to evolve to bring in any significant change. The societal setup discourages women from taking risks or making changes to the family structure for career reasons. Women on their part are unable to gather courage to push for these changes. All these factors lead to the lack of women in senior positions.”