The Triumph of Female Scions in India - Building Gender Balanced Business

• Wharton School’s India Knowledge sees big gains for women in Indian businesses: “Globalization, liberalization, the decay of the institution of marriage and a growing emphasis on education have helped to raise the status of women in family businesses.”

• No longer seen by their families as powerful only via marriage, female scions are both benefiting from and expanding a social change by publicly heading companies. And a woman in charge, in India like everywhere from the US to Vietnam, usually means better returns.

• While their families often see the value — at least eventually — it is the women themselves who are pushing past old limiting customs. “Women are today more determined to make a mark for themselves,” the article quotes Pradeep Mukerjee, founder-director of Confluence Coaching & Consulting, as saying. “They are a lot more career-oriented than in the past and more assertive about their rights and status.”

• K. Ramachandran, associate dean and professor of family business at the Indian School of Business, told India Knowledge, “[T]here is greater recognition that women are equally capable of managing the ‘rough’ world of business. … I do not say that it is newfound love for daughters but realisation of an opportunity to share parental wealth among all children independent of gender.”

• Profiling top Indian business families and their increasingly female scions, the University of Pennsylvania business school notes that women taking over companies were almost always educated abroad.

• “Women who go abroad to study develop a mind of their own,” said Mukerjee, who used to head HR for Citigroup in the Subcontinent.

• The women enter the businesses differently from male scions. Before, sons simply took over at the top, but now most of them spend at least some time in operations. Daughters tend to rise via departments like marketing and finance. Some critics see the emphasis on “clean” work as discriminatory, India Knowledge notes.

The India Knowledge article