Here are some notes I made recently that turned into a full-fledged article. I thought people interested in the Indian business scene might find it interesting:

Women Business Leaders in India – Are Things Any Better Today?

Women in India do better in business today than they did about 35-40 years ago, but it’s fair to say there’s still a lot more they could do. In the professions and at lower levels things might have gotten better, but at the higher levels, you still don’t see the number of women you’d expect, given the available labor pool (in 2001 women were 48% percent of the population).

There are lots of reasons why Indian women at the top still have problems:

How women do is influenced strongly by how well educated they are. So, the more women have access to schooling, the better they perform economically. That’s why there’s been progress, especially at lower levels. But at the upper level, the situation is different. In the 1970s, you could say the main difficulties were the absence of role models and the shortage of financing and opportunities, which to some extent, still persist. But the overwhelming problem today in upper management remains culture: notions of what women should and should not do in the work place.

Traditional gender roles make female bosses unacceptable to a lot of Indian men. Tradition also places the bulk of family responsibilities on the shoulders of women. (This is strictly a generalization, and in particular cases, just the opposite can be true). Culture demands that women stay at home. That make it harder for them to develop networks and mentoring of the kind that men use to launch business careers.

Then there are problems of perception. Women are often seen as needing more time to balance work and family commitments, even when this isn’t really the case. Many male colleagues see them as opting for (and better at) the “soft-focus” areas of a business rather than its hard core. Women tend to get shunted into roles that provide support, communication, and coordination rather than profit and loss evaluation, or expansion and acquisition. That means that while women account for a good part of the ordinary work-force and mid-level positions, they aren’t so visible in the very highest positions. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, CEO of Biocon, says there’s a credibility hurdle that women face when they go out to get financing. People see them as less willing to take risks and less capable of solving problems and trouble- shooting.

Not much research so far:

Another difficulty is that there isn’t much research on the subject available. What there is supports what I’ve observed. Studies in the last 2 years show that Indian women make up 16 percent at junior levels of work but at the highest level (CEOs), that tapers off to only 1 percent. There are only 2 -3 women in administrative and managerial positions for every 100 economically active people. That’s far behind the rest of the world. And while the rest of the world has spent time researching the matter (for example, Breaking through the Glass Ceiling, ILO, 2004), Indian examples haven’t usually figured in the research.

Of course, some of the problems in India are common to other countries too , problems like sexual harassment, patriarchal attitudes and some gender bias in hiring and employment practices. Just as in other countries, these are likely to get better with targeted effort.

Culture can help women too:

Surprisingly, culture can be a positive too. The statistics for top- level managers and leaders in the US may be better. But there are other areas where Indian culture, counter-intuitively, provides a a friendlier environment.

*Studies show that women in Asia tend to draw more of their income from business than women elsewhere. That’s proof of a solid tradition of female business acumen, even if it’s a tradition that’s largely been centered around the family. (Powerful Indian business women usually came out of powerful Indian business families: Simone Tata, from the Tata family (Trent Ltd); Vidya Chabria (Jumbo Group) and Priya Padamjee (Thermax) all owe their positions to family connections).

But even that might be changing now. Now you can also find a Kiran Mazumdar Shaw. Shaw started the biotech giant Biocon, from her garage, after being turned down for a job as a master brewer. And there is a whole crop of managerial divas – from Naina Kidwai (CEO of HSBC) to Microsoft India’s Neelam Dhawan.

Technology spurs womenomics

*There’s another angle to this. It shows how “culture” as an explanation can cut both ways. In India, engineering had been (and still is) a field for men. One side effect was that the “alternative” discipline of computer science was left wide open for women. So, when the Internet revolution brought the outsourcing industry to India, Indian urban women with computer skills got a good chunk of the financial benefits.

*Technology has helped. Contrary to Luddite rhetoric, globalization and the Info-tech revolution have helped womenomics in India. Take transportation. In the past, it’s been a major barrier for would-be business women in India. Now women can set up shop whenever they turn on their computers. Not only do computers let house-bound women become entrepreneurs, they also open up a whole new market of home-shoppers to whom other businesses can sell. Computers also make networking and mentoring easier and cheaper. An example of a bottom-up network enabled by the computer is the popular Indian work-at-home site, sitagita.com

Some people even credit computer technology with the renaissance of Indian female entrepreneurship. That might not be completely true. But what’s true is that female home businesses are a success story overlooked by activists who focus only on the negatives, like the impact of multinationals on female agricultural workers.

Other cultural factors that help

*Despite the traditionalism shown in gender roles, Indian women leaders, at the highest levels, seem to be judged more fairly. A comparison of national politics in the US and in India bears this out. In the US, female candidates have to suffer far more remarks about their appearance than Indian candidates do. And Indian female business leaders are called upon in the media as much as, or more than, American female business leaders.

I believe that one reason for this is a streak of misogyny hidden under the surface of a lot of popular culture in the US. Being able to command the respect of her peers and subordinates is perhaps the most crucial element in a woman getting to the top. But public culture in the US is permeated by demeaning imagery and language. Violently misogynistic rap lyrics and pornography and sexualized epithets for women do not help the perception of them as workers. Asian cultures tend to be less permissive about this.

* Another positive for Indian women in business is that although women are only a tiny part of top management, the women who are at the top are very powerful and in crucial sectors where they make an enormous impact.

How demographics can help women in India

*Demographics also helps in India. India (like China) suffers…and will continue to suffer…a shortage of skilled personnel. This seems incredible given the population figures. But first-class education there really does not reach down as deep as it does in the west. In a number of disciplines, including computer programming and management, there simply aren’t enough people for all the start-ups, expansion and relocation going on. That’s going to be good for women. Human resources departments will have to go after them more actively and groom them for higher positions.

*There are other positives. About a third of India consists of young people below the age of 15. That means that the pool of experienced labor is relatively small and HR departments will be forced to turn to an overlooked resource: women who’re done with rearing their children and want to reenter the job market. Since women live longer than men by several years, there’s no reason why women couldn’t outlast them to reach the top in managerial positions.

*Companies looking to hire Indians who live abroad and relocate them to India are running into obstacles. The Indian- origin employees want pay and benefits equal to other employees. Also, they’re often not in touch with what’s happening in their home country, unless they revisit frequently (as I do). Local employees resent the “foreign-returned” Indians. There are only a few areas where this isn’t so, and two of them are computers and finance. Not surprisingly, some of the most powerful women entrepreneurs and managers are in those areas.

The most important Indian business women

* Who are the most important Indian business women?

It’s difficult for an outsider to judge but it’s possible to pick a dozen of the most visible.

• The capital markets are important as India opens up to foreign direct investment. And Naina Lal Kidwai, who was the first Indian woman to graduate from Harvard Business School and runs the Indian operations of HSBC, has been named repeatedly on lists of the most prominent Indian business women.

  Lalita Gupte and Kalpana Morparia, the joint managing directors of ICICI Bank, India’s second largest bank are important figures as well.

  So is Manisha Girotra, who chairs the India operation of Swiss banking giant UBS.

• In Information technology and computers, one of the most visible managers is Neelam Dhawan, head of Microsoft’s Indian operations.

• In Biotech, the biggest name is Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, who heads Biocon.

• The automotive industry has also been pretty important in recent developments, with a number of large auto manufacturers opening branches in India (including Ford, Toyota, and Hyundai) and with large-scale investment in highway projects and in other infrastructure.Sulajja Firodia Motwani, joint MD of Kinetic Motor, which manufactures two-wheelers, scooters and motorcycles and various auto components, as well as elevators, escalators and auto parking systems, is a noteworthy figure here. Her company has attracted investment from the likes of Citigroup and is likely to do well as the transportation business profits from the real estate boom in India.

• Priya Paul, the chairwoman (chairperson is an awful word – I prefer chairman or chairwoman) of Apeejay Surendra Park Hotels is a business woman in a field which has a pivotal role to play now – travel and tourism. Commercial real estate and the hotel business is slated to be very profitable in Asia and Paul is the president of the Hotel Association of India and leads the Indian team at the World Travel and Tourism Council.
• Health and medicine is an area where India offers extremely competitive rates for world class services and I expect that private medical groups like the Apollo Hospital will do very well, especially as medical tourism grows. Since Apollo caters to that demand, the heads of Apollo, Preetha and Sangita Reddy are positioned at the center of the development.
  
• In alternative medicine, Shahnaz Hussain, CEO of Shahnaz Herbals which has hundreds of world wide franchises, was one of the earliest to realize the business potential of Ayurveda and alternative medicine.

• In the food and beverage industry, Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo’s CEO (and one-time president and CFO) is one of the most noted managers and has been listed among Forbes top 10 women CEOs. She’s also on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of N York, one of the most important banks in the US.
• Shobana Bhartia (of the famous Birla family) is a news maker in the area of media. She’s is the Vice President of Hindustan Times and was appointed to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament.
  
• Vidya Chabria (a non-resident Indian based in Dubai) who took over Jumbo Group (which includes one of the largest distributors of consumer electronics, IT and Telecom in the Middle East as well as several breweries and other companies in India) from her husband,

And you can’t leave out Jyoti Naik, President of Lijjat Papad (pappads are fried lentil crisps very popular in Indian households), the first cooperative business by housewives with no experience to make it big.

My Writing on Women:

My interest in India and Indian women stems from writing about the complexity of language, and about how small groups and businesses (and a contextual approach) do better at catering to the the needs of communities than big businesses.

I am not a gender feminist, although I’ve used the language when it’s useful. I’ve blogged on men’s rights and done some very anti-feminist pieces where I think it’s been warranted.

I would say I’m interested in marrying methodological individualism (from the right) with psycho-social awareness (from the left). Applied complexity theory might be another way of saying it.

Some writing that’s related:

• “Witches and Bastards,” 2005, Counterpunch, is a complex piece about Indira Gandhi and what it means to be a powerful woman in India. It argues that India is in many ways a very female-centered culture, where even village women are more powerful than many give them credit for being. It also suggests that Gandhian political economy has more sense than it’s been given credit for and might be the basis of a small group approach to politics and the economy. (This is a theme I take up in my book “Mobs, Messiahs and Markets,” 2007)
• “Missing Women,” 2004 The Gowanus Review – is a piece I did about female foeticide in India that explores cultural and economic explanations and suggests remedies. I make the point about technology and female entrepreneurship for the first time there.

“Psychic Injuries and Double Standards,” – a chapter contributed to One of the Guys(Seal Press, 2007).

It argues that female soldiers should be held to be as accountable as the male soldiers.

• “The Globalized Village,” Alternet, 2003 (included in the book, The Third World: Alternative Views, 2006)demonstrates how ambiguous language has obscured the negative impact of free market policies on small-scale community efforts. The piece was widely reprinted. I make special note of the impact on village women’s access to water.
• “How About Your Back Yard?” 2004, Himal South Asian, argues that “north-south” language doesn’t help explain the problem of waste disposal in India, and that turning to multinationals doesn’t help. It actually disrupts the successful efforts of local small groups.
• *I did an extended research paper on images of India in the American media as part of my graduate studies and also did graduate work in theories of representation focusing on how speech and imagery affect political discourse, with special reference to pornography.
• This was continued in a series of popular articles in the alternative press, “Iraqi Women and Torture” questioning the media emphasis on the torture of men during the Iraq war. This led to a book on the subject, “The Language of Empire” (MR Press, 2005), which was well-regarded and influenced the work of many establishment journalists.
• I am contributing an article on torture and performance theory to the Routledge Key Concepts Series, 2009. I make an extended argument to show that depictions of women in violent pornography can be torturous, given the cultural context.