Press Release: NASSCOM & TATVA supports the cause for grooming women leaders in organizations

Mumbai, India, July 11, 2013: NASSCOM under their Diversity and Inclusion initiative along with TATVA organized a summit on ‘Building the Women Leadership Pipeline’, today, Wednesday, July 10, 2013 at Mumbai. The summit was inaugurated by Mr. Rajesh Agarwal, IT Secretary, Government of Maharashtra. The key note address was given by Ms. Valsa Nair Singh, Additional Metropolitan Commissioner, MMRDA Govt. of Maharashtra. Other speakers of the session were – Mr. Rajiv Vaishnav, Vice President at NASSCOM, & Ms. Kuku Singh, Founder of Tatvã Leadership. The summit was attended by approximate 50 participants including HR professionals from various leading organizations across sectors.

Addressing the audience, Ms. Valsa Nair Singh, Additional Metropolitan Commissioner, MMRDA Govt. of Maharashtra shared her concern about the low representation of the women in the leadership role across sectors. She stated that the scale of women in leadership roles is extremely low at key places such as the Indian parliament has “Only 11 percent women while the BSE listed companies have only seven percent women at CEO levels, despite the fact that women comprise of almost 50 percent of India’s total population. The solution to address the gender imbalance in the leadership role is by promoting gender diversity at workplace and scaling up the number of women in leadership roles”

In the summit, Ms. Kuku Singh, Founder of Tatvã Leadership shared her thoughts on this issue and described the various interventions that Tatva has designed to address the problem of gender imbalance in various organizations. Ms. Singh also shared with the audience, TATVA’S focus on diversity agenda, i.e. to create inclusivity and gender sensitization among all levels of employees.

During the session, Mr. Rajesh Agarwal, IT Secretary, Govt. of Maharashtra strongly advocated the adoption of favorable concepts such as, flexible working conditions, paternity leave, e-office as steps towards maintaining the perfect work-life balance for both genders.

Moreover, the participants at the summit also discussed the roadmap of building a Women Leadership Pipeline in organizations and adoption of best practices in the industry. The summit highlighted that the necessity for grooming women for leadership roles is a major driving force for most organizations. They focused on the point to build a strategy for mentoring women in organizations and ensuring that they gain their rightful place in the corporate as well as the government sector. While a fair amount of work has happened in spreading awareness and sensitizing organizations, the current reality is that sizable exits at the middle management and aspiration deficits at the senior management level have been causing a major challenge on having a good amount of women at the GM/ VP level. This in turn affects the diversity environment in the company.