What can India Inc do to become truly inclusive?

More often than not, as a serial entrepreneur, I have been accustomed to walking into boardrooms to find myself as the lone woman in the room. This often makes me wonder about the possibilities where there is no woman in the boardroom resulting in complete absence of a ‘woman’s perspective’ in critical decision making. How can this skew get addressed? When can we see a gender-neutral boardroom where a thought of unequal representation doesn’t cross our minds?

‘Parity’ on my mind

One of the biggest announcements in recent times on pay parity has come from an unexpected corner, cricket! Women cricketers are now entitled to the same match fee as men in what many publications claimed as a “New Era of Equality” in Indian cricket. This is undoubtedly a welcome move and is bound to have a ripple effect where a pay gap based on gender is going to raise more eyebrows and get even more difficult to be justified. This one move has made pay in cricket gender neutral.

Can this be extended to other sports? Can this new era dawn for artists, musicians, professors, CXOs, white and blue collared employees and construction workers? There is no reason why it shouldn’t, and we as entrepreneurs, CHROs, managers and even employees need to be cognizant of our policies, question them and have parity at the core of our value system.

Parenting has a role to play

I am proud to be a mother of two adorable kids, my elder daughter Ananya and my younger son Sid. As traditional parents, subconsciously at times, we end up giving more freedom to our sons and have restrictions around our daughters. I have consciously tried to give my daughter the utmost freedom, be it to pursue art, start a new club at school, try stock market trading or explore entrepreneurial ideas. While I might still be far from perfect, it is crystal clear that a gender-neutral style of parenting definitely has positive outcomes in the risk-taking ability of a girl child. Be it pursuing higher education, taking risk with a startup idea or taking up a career in sport; parenting at their adolescent years could be a game changer for their future and we as parents should strive to strike a right balance and walk the tight-rope of gender-neutral parenting.

Education, entrepreneurship and women

According to an industry report, women constitute only about 14 percent of total entrepreneurs in India and among the 106 unicorns in India, only 12 are women-led ventures. It is a known fact that the majority of leaders at the helm of the VC / PE / Founder ecosystem, more often than not, stem from the dorms of IITs and IIMs. The representation of women in these institutes, though on an improving trend, is still a long way from achieving gender neutrality. The kind of peer group interaction that’s available to men from these educational institutions and the founder ecosystem isn’t available to women because the imbalance in representation is at multiple levels.

To address this, we need to encourage women to take up professional courses, invest in Learning & Development, pursue higher education be it graduation, masters, or PhD. Secondly, we need to provide increased access to capital from a pool of funds pooled specifically to help women entrepreneurs. Third is to nurture a supportive ecosystem that makes the entrepreneurial journey worthwhile. At IndiQube, we were fortunate to be a part of the growth journey for several women-led startups and take pride in nurturing an ecosystem of women entrepreneurs with our HerQube initiative, offering subsidised rates, lower lock-ins and flexible payment terms in their initial journey.

Women in the workforce

Although Indian women represent 48 percent of the population, their contribution to the GDP is only about 17 percent; this compared to 40 percent in China is a significant gap. According to industry estimates, initiating gender equality in India could add $12 trillion to global growth. Increasing women’s labour force participation by 10 percent could add $700 billion to India’s GDP by 2025. With India ranked 70 of 77 countries in the Female Entrepreneurship Index, it need not be emphasised any further that women in the workforce is an opportunity India cannot miss!

The need for change

Entrepreneurship is a highly daunting lifestyle. There is constant pressure with regards to market penetration, scalability, unit metrics and profitability amongst others. Women in addition to these must also deal with cultural biases, societal norms and socio-economic challenges. Also, entrepreneurship is compared to taking risks and women are often labelled as risk averse. There is also an inherent cultural bias that the career of the woman in the family takes a back seat and plays a supporting role to the career of man, who is often the sole breadwinner. It is now high time to break these biases.

To all the women readers, follow your dreams, and do not let anyone dictate what you can and cannot dream. Just like the amazing 100 Women Leaders who have received this special mention from YourStory, you too are a changemaker with your story in the making!