Women under-represented in leadership positions across industries: Survey
Mumbai, March 7
Even as companies are focused on improving gender diversity, a survey on Monday showed that insufficient representation of women at leadership roles continues to impact pay equity. According to Mercer’s 2021 India Total Remuneration Survey (TRS), at the entry level women’s compensation to that of men was 95-99 per cent when all variables were kept same, however, this ratio drastically dropped at mid to senior levels.
At mid to senior levels, women executives earned only about 87-95 per cent as compared to their male peers, the survey added.
Some reasons for this drop in pay include slower pace of promotions, development opportunities and women representation in roles which drive organisation value creation or profit and loss (P&L) ownership, it noted.
The survey is based on data from over 900 companies, across 5,700 job functions and over 14 lakh cumulative employees. In the technology sector, it stated that women representation was 43 per cent at the entry levels, but it drastically reduced to 12-17 per cent at managerial level and was an abysmal 4-8 per cent at executive levels.
The industries with better women representation were IT, Customer Service, Engineering and Science, Human Resources, Data Analytics and Business Intelligence, among others, the survey said. While jobs such as Legal, Compliance and Audit and Sales, Marketing and Product Management had a poor women representation, it added.
“Organisations are broadly committed to diversity and inclusion, but there seems to be a lack of accountability to drive the progress internally. While the new Labour codes focusing on improving women employment, pay and security at workplace are welcome, companies have to take quick strides in truly integrating and empowering women,” Mercer, Senior Principal, Rewards Consulting Leader India, Mansee Singhal said.
The survey highlighted that if women representation improves in roles that are closer to value creation, then equity would seem to be a more achievable goal, she added.
