India Leads in C-Suite but Trails on Boards - Building Gender Balanced Business

• Women are CEOs at 26 of the 240 largest companies in India, well above the rates at major Western economies.

• The survey of the companies — Indian-owned and multinational, private and state-owned — found that about half of the ones run by women are in financial services. At 11% each were media and pharmaceuticals.

• 35% of the women CEOs ran their own companies, and a number reached the pinnacle because of family ties. But that means the other 65% are professional CEOs.

• The executive search firm EMA Partners, which carried out the survey, noted that women run as much as 54% of the financial blue chips it reviewed.

• “Amongst private and foreign banks, women almost outnumber men. This has been helped in no mean measure by women from ICICI bank who have joined other financial institutions in recent times,” said EMA Partners Managing Partner K Sudarshan.

• Chanda Kochhar is Managing Director and CEO of ICICI Bank, while former ICICI Prudential chief Shikha Sharma heads Axis Bank and Kalpana Morparia is Country Head of JPMorgan.

• Women are CEO of 3, soon to be 4, of the FTSE 100 companies in the UK, while 3% of US blue chips are run by women.

• EMA noted that even though India was well ahead of more developed countries, the financial sector was the only one close at parity. EMA Partners International Chairman James Douglas said, “Given that roughly about 50 percent of our population is female, that about 50 percent of staff is female in most markets, the gender is hugely unrepresented in boards and at the CEO level.”

• India’s very strong showing in the C-suite does not carry over to boards, where women hold only 3.9% of seats.

• The result at the board level, however, may be more of a reflection on the nature and governance of boards in India, according to Economic Times.

• Assessing the Spencer Stuart search firm’s first India Board Index, the newspaper said the situation for the country’s boards were “sorry”, noting that most of the companies had a non-executive chair, fewer than 3 in 10 had a non-Indian non-executive director, and pay per meeting relative to UK or US compensation was extremely low.

The Economic Times articles on women CEOs and boards