According to a new report by Avtar, a Chennai-based diversity and workplace inclusion firm, and Working Mother, a New York-based firm, Accenture, Infosys, Citibank, Deloitte and Ernst & Young are the best five companies in India for women to work at. Other companies in the top 10 list as per this report include Deutsche Bank, Genpact, IBM, MasterCard and ZS Associates.
The report covered 334 companies across industries and based their survey on 300 questions related to practices, policies and programmes initiated or executed to ensure gender inclusion in workplaces. Other findings of the report, called Best Companies for Women in India (BCWI), also shed light on what makes these companies tick and what the workplaces trends for women have been like in the last two years.
The report shows that around 6.1 per cent of women working in the top 100 companies in India received promotions this year. Compared to the 5.6 per cent of men who received promotions, this number reflects well on the gender equality parameter. Among the top 10 companies, 4.3 per cent of women employees received promotions, while 3.9 per of cent male employees also got promoted in the same companies.
The number of women employees in the top 100 increased from 34 per cent in 2020 to 34.5 per cent in 2021. Given that this number was at only 25 per cent in 2016, it’s also heartening. The representation of women in managerial positions also rose from 23 per cent in 2020 to 25.4 per cent in 2021. The report also found that the trend of senior leadership mentoring women and advocating their rise in the ranks also witnessed an upsurge, with this being a whopping 66 per cent in 2021 compared to only 45 per cent in 2016. The report shows that around 84 per cent of the companies they considered have put better mechanisms in place to improve gender equality in the workplace, with quite a few focusing on bridging the gender pay gap as well.
While these numbers appear heartening, the report also found that the number of women who got promotions in 2021 in the top 100 companies actually fell from a whopping 13 per cent in 2020. “The deep trough being witnessed in promotion of women in 2021 best companies, as compared to the previous year, is mirrored in the dip in leadership in sectors such as BFSI and pharma,” Avtar founder Saundarya Rajesh revealed. “However, when compared to the lakhs of women who lost jobs across the hierarchy because of COVID, this is a silver lining, as companies within the 100 best were able to elevate women to positions of greater responsibility during times of crisis.”