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Women at the top are still rare. Globally, they comprise only 10 per cent of senior managers in Fortune 500 companies, less than four per cent are in the uppermost ranks of CEO, president, executive vice president and COO and less than three per cent of them are top corporate earners. In India too, it is no different. May be worse. Though statistics elude us, if you look around, you will not find even a handful of companies headed by women or women at the helm of strategic departments. But that does not mean that the situation is not improving. Yes, it is women are being taken for jobs of responsibility, though it may be more on the HR, servicing, IT or finance side and much less in hardcore production or marketing jobs. Nevertheless, women who are at the top are determined to stay there and more are aspiring to reach there, glass ceiling or no glass ceiling. In fact companies themselves are now more open to women as leaders at ICICI, it's the women leadership that is making a mark.
demands on their time outside the office. And when they do reach the managerial level, they bring with them both the silver lining and the dark clouds. But they flower, if they are allowed to flower, despite all the obstacles, which are mainly societal and perceptual.
The contradictions
Says Ranjana Kumari, Director, Centre for Social Research which runs a course under its Gender Training Institute for corporate executives and managers on `Leadership and Management with a Gender Perspective', "Several corporate men and women who attend our course have conveyed two basic psychologies that dominate the thought and action of women managers, and they are contradictions of each other. "A woman-led office is always a better, brighter place for everybody to work in. You are bound to find flowers, plants and socially relevant posters. Women managers are more accessible and use a human, participatory approach with their colleagues. But there is a flip side to it there is often a complaint that women bosses are aggressive and dominating and push for a job to be completed more than normal.'' However, Ranajana Kumari, who has specialised in women studies, attempts to explain why this happens. She feels that when women reach the top it is the anxiety to prove themselves that gets translated into certain actions. Often women managers tend to subsume their female identity to be part of the top management. The justification is, ` I'm a manager, not a woman' and the worry is how people in the organisation respond to them. Sue Evans, Principal Consultant, A.T. Kearney, has another explanation, one that involves perspectives. She feels it could often be due to double standards. "What's assertive in men is viewed as aggressive in women, and it's mostly men who make this complaint,'' she says and then adds, " But I do believe women often have to overplay their assertiveness in order to be heard. Women have softer, higher voices and have to muscle in to get heard at a meeting.''
Adept at juggling
One of the strongest skills she has found in women managers is their ability at multitasking. Women are used to performing different roles and struggling with different tasks at the same time, in the kitchen, at home and also at work. "She's adept at keeping a lot of balls in the air and juggling around the tasks she has to perform, this gives her an added advantage. However, the downside could be losing a little of the focus,'' she says. Sue Evans, who was earlier with Gillette in the United Kingdom, recalls that one of her best bosses was a woman. " I remember watching her carefully, but very cleverly manipulate the men at a meeting and bring them to agree with her point of view. However, her manoeuvres were not political and I really respected her for the way she did it.''
Ritu Nanda, CEO at Escolife and Ritu Nanda Insurance Services Pvt Ltd (RNIS) is a veteran at starting ventures at Escorts. She is categorical in her view that indeed women managers bring with them a different style and different skills. She says, "Of course women managers do things differently from men managers because research has shown that women have 40 per cent more nerve connectors than men. Research has also confirmed that the female gene is stronger than the male gene. It is for this reason that women see things laterally, intuitively and differently. They can handle more, tolerate more and deliver much more than a man.'' Ritu Nanda also does not agree that women often make aggressive managers. "Women are born to be managers. They are managing people, family, home, office, life etc. etc. all the time naturally and with utmost ease. The issue of becoming aggressive does not arise.'' Sue Evans too lists all the positive attributes of women managers. She feels that they have a different mind set and build teams in a different way, by nurturing as well as delegating. A majority of them also have less of a need to dominate and demonstrate authority. She points out an important aspect of women in leadership that they tend to be less political and more pragmatic in their approach. In fact she cites political ineptness as one of the reasons why women do not fare as well as men. In fact, management studies show that women's style of functioning, which is essentially `interactive leadership', involves several characteristics including encouraging participation from others, making inter-personal relations positive for the entire team or department, being able to share power and information with others, getting people passionate about their work and increasing people's feeling of self worth. However, this participatory style is not something that women `acquire', instead increasingly it is being said that it comes to them naturally due to their inherent ability to nurture and take people along. There are also other things that come naturally to women. As Neerja Sharma, General Manager and Company Secretary, Ballarpur Industries Limited points out, "Women are a lot more organised and their commitment levels are higher. They also plan their job more efficiently and are more effective in delivery.'' She feels that women in general and women managers in particular have a different value system and that integrity is ingrained in them. She too disagrees that women managers are uncertain of themselves and look for reassurance and hence tend to be aggressive. "All the women I know are very confident of themselves. It's a pleasure dealing with women as they do not beat around the bush and desist from playing politics,'' she says.