Today, International Women’s Day, is a day to celebrate the strides women have made in many spheres. It’s the time to focus on their struggles, triumphs, talents, and achievements. It’s also a day to focus on women’s rights and the discrimination faced by women in the workplace.
A recent research report by a faculty member of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA), Prof Promila Agarwal, brings to light a worrying finding pertaining to the Indian corporate sector. The review sections of the report reveal that the pay gap between men and women increases as women advance in their careers.
The study titled ‘The Glass Ceiling: Research Report on Leadership Gender Balance in NSE 200 Companies’ reveals that, on an average, senior women executives earn Rs. 85 for every Rs. 100 that senior men executives earn!
The literature section of the report reveals that while women at an individual contributor level earn only 2.2% less than men working in similar roles, the gap widens for managers/supervisors, directors, and executives, The study covered 4,146 senior executives from 109 companies.
Speaking to Vibes of India, Prof Agarwal says: “The factors causing the gender pay gap are multidimensional. One, women do not negotiate for a good package. Two, when they do negotiate, their salary requests are not given importance. Three, both men and women believe that women are secondary breadwinners. Four, women have different goals.”
Even today, men are not comfortable marrying women who earn more than them and women also do not want to marry men earning less than them. At times, women leave the workforce as they feel that the probability of being promoted and rising in the hierarchy is low, she explains.
Prof Agarwal’s study attributes the findings on the gender imbalance in pay to four buckets of causes – family, organization, self, and society. Under family, there are conflicting choices to be made at times between career and marriage. A woman’s relationship with her spouse, and how supportive the spouse is, determines how much she will advance in her career. Often, women are the primary caregivers for children or the elderly and shoulder the bulk of household responsibilities.
In an organizational setting, there may be covert discrimination and negative attitudes towards women managers. Self-limiting thoughts and behaviours, like not actively seeking power and status, is another cause for the prevalence of gender imbalance. Gender stereotypes and discrimination at society level make it harder for organizations to execute necessary changes.
Another finding of the IIMA study is that the percentage of women in top management and senior executive positions is significantly lower than the percentage of women on the board of directors. The number of women directors have increased from 4.5 per cent in 2014 to around 16 per cent in 2020 due to regulatory requirements.
The study highlights that women’s participation in the workforce in India is very low at 20 per cent as against 55 per cent in the US and 60 per cent in China as per World Bank data for 2019.
There is one silver lining, according to Prof Agarwal. According to literature, women in India who get back to work after a maternity break find it easier to get a job closer to their earlier role as compared to women in US, Germany, and Japan.
