December 21, 2025

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Taking Centre Stage

EVEN AFTER INDIAN WOMEN won the right to vote in 1950, and then gradually started enter-ing the formal workforce in increasing num-bers, corporate leadership circles remained almost entirely male. At present, 21% of board Eseats are held by women, up from barely 6% in 2013, according to a report by Khaitan & Co, Aon, LML and Arise titled Presence to Influence: Advancing Women in Indian Boardrooms. This feels like overdue progress. However, when compared with th 30–40% repre-sentation in countries such as France, Norway, and Belgium that imple-mented mandatory gender quotas, the pace of India's progress in terms of gender diversity in boardrooms appears more modest.The f irst big push for cha nge in Ind ia w as t he Compa n ies Ac t of 2 013 , wh ich mandated the appointment of women directors on boards of companies in specified categories. Section 149(1) said every listed company and certain classes of public companies (those with a paid-up capital of `100 crore or a turnover of `300 crore or more) must appoint at least one woman director on their boards. The decision to make boards more gender-diverse could well have been triggered by what was happening in the rest of the world. Take the case of Norway, which mandated a 40% quota for women on corpo-rate boards in 2003. Many countries, including Spain, Finland, Iceland, France, Israel, Italy, Belgium, Germany and Austria, followed that up with their own mandates. That begs the question, how gender diverse have Indian company boards really become? SLOW AND STEADYIn every sense, India is a different terrain. It has a well-entrenched cul-ture of promoter-driven companies of multiple sizes across regions, mul-tinationals, public sector undertakings and a large number of emerging players. The report cited analysed the BSE 200 group of companies at the end of FY24 and found 18.5% women representation on boards. Again, 98% of that universe had at least one woman director, 59% had two or more, and 22% had three or more.Before the Companies Act 2013, there were many reasons for the lim-ited representation. “People prefer to work with those who are like them-selves. Till you equalise that balance, you will need to push this through regulations,” says Apurva Purohit, Co-founder of food products firm Aazol and an independent director on various boards like those of LTIM-indtree, L&T Technology Services.To Purohit, the issue is not the size of the company. “It comes down to high governance standards. Personally, I am a lot more comfortable with more than one woman on company boards since voices become that much stronger,” she says. For companies, it is an evolving situation, and they would have to recognise the benefits of having more women direc-tors. According to her, many of them start with one woman for diversity.

The Power LEDGER

WHEN ARUNDHATI BHATTACHARYA was transferred to Lucknow in the mid-2000s to become the new General Manager, she considered bidding goodbye to State Bank of India (SBI), the country's largest bank. Her biggest worry was finding a good school for her daughter. The decision to move from her hometown, Kolkata, was difficultHer mentor M. S. Verma's advice came in handy. The former chairman of SBI and TRAI encouraged her to take the opportunity saying she had come a long way and there was no question of giving up when she was so close to reaching the top. Bhattacharya took that advice--and it turned out to be the best decision she made, as years later she would shatter one of India's oldest glass ceilings by becoming the first woman to head the country's largest bankVibha Padalkar, the MD & CEO of HDFC Life, didn't have to look far for inspiration or advice like Bhattacharya, since most of it came from her family. "I come from a family that has had several accomplished women, including my mother, who was a trailblazer herself," she says. Her mother was a 1964-batch IAS officer. Her aunts were accomplished in their respective fields, too, ranging from doctors to filmmakers. "The `finance spark' was ignited by my uncle, who was a finance director him-