View: Women Reservation Bill must be implemented in an unbiased way
Lok Sabha and state assemblies for women — although not before the 2029 elections. To be sure, gender equality is one of the SDGs India has committed to achieve by 2030.
While companies are now seen talking up gender diversity in leadership roles, it didn’t come naturally to them.
The Companies Act 2013 made it mandatory for every listed company and large public company to have at least one woman as director on their boards.
The companies found a convenient solution to comply with this diktat.
Many of them appointed female relatives of the promoters’ family to comply with the mandate. The common lament was: where are the eligible women who can qualify for aseat at the board? The practice was rampant enough for Sebi to make it mandatory for the top 1,000 listed companies to have at least one independentwoman as director on their boards.
Thus, implementing the gender diversity agenda in its true spirit was brought about only after the law plugged the loophole to ensure female directors are roped in on merit — ‘independently’ — rather than simply to act as placeholders to meet the quota requirement.
In recent years, we have seen a new set of qualified and experienced female directors who are ‘tried and tested’ and who, between them, hold bulk of the ‘quota’ seats on Indian boards.
While the legal quota was important to get women a toe into boardrooms, the quota shouldn’t end up defining the women’s participation in the boards.
Today, 95% of listed companies have a woman on their boards, but only a few that have women on boards beyond that required number.
The Indian parliamentary system may well follow the same pattern in complying with the Women’s Reservation Bill. The first tranche of women joining Parliament to fill up
