30 WOMEN IN POWER
Author: Naina lal kidwai
Publisher: Rupa, Rs500
Edited by Naina lal Kidwai, 30 Women in Power is a collection of essays written by 30 Indian women who are heading their respective organisations. In an interaction, Kidwai tells ANANYA BORGOHAIN about women in the corporate sector
Naina lal Kidwai was the first Indian woman to have graduated from the Harvard Business School in 1982, a fact that she calls an unfortunate social comment on the Indian setup. She was also one of the first women employees of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Currently the Country Head of HSBC India and formerly the President of Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), Kidwai recently launched her book where 30 women like her have written their success stories. The essays in this compilation have been written by the Managing Directors of Facebook India, Kellogg India, Intel India, Chairperson of SBI, CEOs of the Tata Group, ICICI, President of Kotak Mahindra Bank, founder-cum-CEO of National Stock Exchange, Founding partner of AZB & Partners, Executive Vice-chairperson of Apollo Hospitals, and many more, who all happen to be women. In an interaction, Kidwai talks further about women in corporate India:
Not many know that we have so many women CEOs. Does India really have the largest number of female CEOs in the worldIJ
As far as the financial sector is concerned, I’m quite confident that India does have the largest number of women CEOs. I had done a few tests in the business community, among friends and clients, as to whether they could tell me the names of the heads of some companies. Or I would take a name from the book and ask them if it sounded familiar and they wouldn’t be able to tell me who she was. It made me realise that the knowledge of who our women CEOs are was not out there. Most people would still recognise 30-40 per cent of the high profile names but there were so many more who were not known well.
Do we not hear more of them because the issue of women’s subjugation in India overpower the successful storiesIJ
I don’t think so. I think there are two Indias. The incident which gave me the inspiration for this book was the December 16 Delhi gangrape case which shook the country’s conscience. It was so tragic and shocking and repeats itself in the country. We are not seen as safe in our own country and incidents of rape are common even in this day and age. On the other hand, we also have cause for celebration and I don’t think that we celebrate that enough. The entire rhetoric in the media should also be about celebrating what’s good and that feeling comes from, in this particular case, in celebrating the number of women who are indeed up there as CEOs of institutions. I picked only 30 and could have probably gone on with four volumes of more women. They aren’t a part of this volume probably because they didn’t have the time to write or were not comfortable in writing.
How did you choose the women whose stories you wanted to featureIJ
I wanted a mix of women from different areas of the economy. I wanted at least two or three women from each of the key sectors: IT, media, banking, not-for-profit, Government etc. My single criterion was that it should be women who have led large teams, so that some of the discourses that I wanted were on leadership.
Why does banking have so many women leadersIJ
There are actually only six out of the 30 in this book, and there too I have merged banking and the capital market. Women are indeed a major force in banking also because many who are at the helm now have been in the sector for 30 years. Other sectors have accepted women late in comparison. We have Arundhati Bhattacharya (SBI) and Vijayalakshmi R Iyer (BOI) and they have come a really long way. Today, the biggest bank we have is headed by a woman.
I had read in your previous interviews that the male members of your family were initially dismissive of you.
I was growing up in the late 1970s in a very north Indian culture, even in Bombay. Then I went to college in Delhi way back in 1974-1977. At that time women in the workplace were certainly not the norm. Yes, male members of my family would certainly be dismissive because none of the women in my family had ever worked. In that sense, I think I was unusual in my family. I was, in fact, quite different from the social milieu and mindset at that time. After all, when I applied at PwC, in the first instance they had turned me away saying that they didn’t hire women. It was only after some pushing that that policy changed. After that, when I went to the Harvard Business School, I was the first Indian woman to graduate from there, which I think is a sad social comment because Indian men had been there for three decades prior to that.
So Harvard must have offered you the conducive ambience and led you to who you are todayIJ
Definitely. I think education is very important at any stage. One thing it does is that it gives you the training and mental agility; and a top business school like the Harvard Business School gives you the sense of self-worth and in my case, the fact it was a globally renowned institution certainly gave me the self-confidence to be able to hold my grounds at various stages. Education brings credibility with it even in the external environment whether you are dealing with colleagues or customers.
I think in India in particular, education and privilege are pre-requisites for women to succeed. Many of the women featured in this book also belong to a privileged, educated or even middle-class environment; somewhere they were well-off to begin with.
Not all of them come from privileged backgrounds. I think this compilation is a wide mix. There are women whose parents were in the Air Force, Army, teachers, rural environment, and so on. But yes, if you have to look at privilege, it would be at least the fact that their families believed in education. I am glad to see that those are strong middle class values in our country. All of these women benefitted from the fact that they were smart, right and that got recognition within their families and that got them their wings to fly. If you look at some of the issues that Mirai Chatterjee raises in the book, in her organisation SEWA, she is Harvard educated but the women she works with are often illiterate and yet they are able to fly with help and support of the right order. When you arm these women with simple tools, they learn easily. So, it’s about social empowerment which can also come without education. With the right social infrastructure and economic capability and group efforts, social change can be aspired.
How do you train women in HSBC or FICCIIJ
One of my guiding principles is Maha Sthavira Sangharakshita's saying, "To know what you do not know is the beginning of wisdom". At any point of time, there are lots that one does not know; so the process of learning doesn’t end. I see life like a sponge, always absorbing knowledge like it’s water. In organisations such as ours, learning is an ongoing process. There are many programmes and e-learning modules, some are in fact forced on the women and they have to take the courses. FICCI has a programme which is getting midlevel women from organisations to mentor them to be a part of boards. So now there are 75 women distributed among three batches of 25 each.
What kind of reservation does the corporate sector have for womenIJ
Right now, there should be at least one woman in the board in a listed company.
What sort of facilities do expecting women have in the corporate sectorIJ
Different companies have different rules. At HSBC, we provide six months maternity leave, paternity leave, and you can combine with other additional leave that you may need. There is also the provision of crèches; you’re able to have your kid in the same building.
What about the provisions for the differently-abled womenIJ
The whole idea is to respect diversity. The idea is to create an ambience where they find it easier to stay with you as well as to return to you after leaving. We have an active programme that stays in touch with them even after they are gone and may tempt them to come back, even after three or four years. And then there is the concept of flexi-hours, it is something that has to be worked out because not every organisation has it.
Most of the women in the compilation have quoted literary figures. You quote Shaw, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw (Biocon) quotes Frost, Debjani Ghosh (Intel South-Asia) quotes Napoleon, Bharti Ramola (PwC) cites fromPride and Prejudice, and so on. Are women by nature RomanticIJ
I think women are well-read and well-rounded, and maybe to some extent, even well-exposed. I do think that what we get here are women who are perceptive and efficient. A great CEO better be perceptive.
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