One in five board members at India Inc is now a woman

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Five years ago, one in eight directors was a woman, and ten years ago, the proportion was one among twenty members, Prime Database research showed.

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Though there is progress made in enhancing gender equity at the board level, the glass is both half full and half empty. The legal mandate has ensured that almost all the 500 companies have a woman director on their boards, but it has also defined the presence of women on Indian boards. In total, 223 (or 45%) of the Nifty-500 companies have only one woman director, in compliance with the law.

Furthermore, the bigger the size of the board, the more conspicuous is the dearth of women directors. There are 81 companies with only one woman director on their respective boards of ten or more members. For instance, L&T with a board size of 19 members has only one woman director. Ironically, the only woman director on the board of L&T is Preetha Reddy, the vice chairperson of Apollo Hospitals that has six women directors on its board of 11 members. Apollo Hospitals is one of the eight companies of the '50%+ club' where women make up half or more of the board.

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«Company managements hire independent directors, the people with whom they have some earlier interactions which gives them comfort, or the government officials post their retirement» said Manju Agarwal, an independent woman director on boards of several listed companies. «Since most of these people tend to be male