Avtar & Seramount’s flagship benchmarking study, Best Companies for Women in India, enters its 11th edition with 387 companies participating this year, of which 125 made it to the Best Companies list. The 11-year BCWI journey has brought significant progress, but this year’s data is a reminder that progress cannot be taken for granted. Women’s representation has dipped slightly, with a sharper decline at the leadership level.
Against this backdrop, and at a time when DEI is facing pushback in many parts of the world, Dr Saundarya Rajesh sits down for a detailed Q&A on what companies in India are getting right, what they need to do differently, which industries are leading, and what the decline in women’s representation means for women, businesses and the country. She also looks at why women are leaving and what companies can do to enable experienced women to climb the ladder. Read on.
In what aspects are Avtar & Seramount ‘Best Companies for Women in India’ doing well now?
Dr Saundarya Rajesh: The strongest progress is in the systems the Avtar & Seramount ‘Best Companies for Women in India’ are building around women’s careers. Formal second-career programs, for instance, are now present in 71% of Best Companies, compared with just 30% in 2016. Companies are also getting better at supporting women through career breaks, with maternity retention at 94% and 78% offering phase-back programs. Support for caregiving is becoming more comprehensive too. Paid paternity leave is offered by 99% of Best Companies, and the average duration of fully paid leave has increased from seven days in 2016 to 22 days today. At the same time, career advancement is becoming more structured, with 100% of Avtar & Seramount ‘Best Companies for Workplace Wellness’ having formal career pathways, internal job-posting platforms and succession planning for critical roles, while 92% provide formal career conversations separately from performance reviews.
Also, most importantly, leadership accountability is becoming more visible. In 94% of Best Companies, women’s advancement metrics are regularly reviewed with the executive responsible, while 78% have leadership oversight of compensation plans linked to women’s advancement. Together, these practices show that leading companies are increasingly building systems that support women.
What would you want companies to do differently now?
Dr Saundarya Rajesh: Companies need to shift their attention from participation to progression. Women make up 36.3% of all hires, but only 19.8% of Corporate Executive hires. Their representation also falls from around 27% at manager level to about 21% at senior-manager level and 16.7% at the Corporate Executive level. Senior hiring, therefore, needs particular attention. The drop in women’s share of Corporate Executive hires, from 27% in 2025 to 19.8% this year, is a clear signal that we need to look more closely at what happens as women move up the leadership pipeline.
This is also where we need to move from inclusion as belonging to inclusion as influence. Ultimately, influence is what creates real change. Women need not just a place in the room, but a meaningful voice in the decisions that shape businesses and workplaces.
Is the change in women’s representation significant enough to suggest a trend, or could it be a year-on-year fluctuation?
Dr Saundarya Rajesh: I would not dismiss the downward movement as mere fluctuation. We know that diversity and inclusion are being questioned in many parts of the world, and the decline is particularly sharp at the Corporate Executive level, where women’s representation has fallen from 20% to 16.7%. Women also accounted for just 19.8% of Corporate Executive hires this year, down from 27% in 2025. At the same time, the longer-term picture remains positive – overall women’s representation has risen from 25% in 2016 to around 35% in 2026. But the priority now is to ensure that this downward movement at the senior-most levels does not become a pattern.
How do the Metros compare with Tier 2 and 3 cities and towns? And which states are doing better when it comes to women’s participation and retention?
Dr Saundarya Rajesh: Metros still have an advantage overall. Women’s representation averages 34.3% in metros, compared with 23.8% in non-metros. But some smaller cities are outperforming the metros quite significantly. Vellore, for instance, has 58.3% women’s representation, followed by Tiruchirappalli at 53.9% and Coimbatore at 42.8%, while the numbers for Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad are 41.1%, 39.1% and 38.9%, respectively.
That tells us that geography alone does not determine women’s participation, and that smaller cities can absolutely compete with, and in some cases outperform metros. So, the local employment ecosystem clearly matters, which includes the availability of jobs, the industries present, and the extent to which workplaces are designed to attract and retain women.
(Continued in Part 2)…
