A recent survey by India Leaders for Social Sector (ILSS) shows that nearly 73 per cent of emerging women leaders working in the social sector believe that persistent mentorship and networking boosts their leadership ambitions. The survey was conducted to shed light on the complexities around women’s leadership in the sector. This was done by surveying the gaps and challenges, understanding the best practices, visualising the scope of positive interventions, and exploring support structures.
The survey included women with at least seven to 15 years of work experience from various fields across the sector, and its results highlighted the prevalence of socialised beliefs like imposter syndrome which limit leadership qualities among 50 per cent of women leaders. This explains the disproportionate lack of women leaders in senior management roles, the stagnation of women in entry-to-mid-level roles, and their limitation to programme-specific roles that focus on care work instead of strategising. Around 84.1 per cent of respondents also said that tailored capacity-building programmes can enhance their leadership journey.
“This report opens up some of the questions that arise in relation to women’s work, their continuing precarity because of the social and economic context in which they are placed, their relative absence in leadership positions, and in doing so, allows us to also look at the challenges women are confronted with and what may be done to overcome these,” says Urvashi Butalia, founder of Zubaan books.