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 (continued from Part 1).
Which industries are doing well, and which industries are lagging?
Dr Saundarya Rajesh: Professional Services currently leads women’s representation at 46%, followed by ITES at 40% and GCCs at 38%. At the other end, Manufacturing remains the biggest challenge, with women accounting for just 13% of the workforce. Pharma has also seen a sharp decline, from 25% in 2025 to 17% this year. But representation alone does not tell the whole story. Manufacturing, for instance, has the lowest women’s hiring ratio at 19%, yet women account for 21% of its Corporate Executive hires. Its retention picture is also relatively strong, with women’s attrition at just 9.9%, the lowest across industries, followed by GCCs at around 12.6%. So I would resist labelling an industry simply as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Different sectors have different pressure points. Some need to focus on getting more women into the workforce, while others need to look more closely at progression and retention.
How are Indian companies doing with respect to diversity and inclusion, when compared to American-headquartered companies? And what about non-American companies?
Dr Saundarya Rajesh: Indian companies are becoming a larger part of the Best Companies cohort, accounting for 37% this year, while MNCs make up the remaining 63%. This is significant in the Indian context, where there is growing focus on diversity and inclusion, particularly gender inclusion. The country has set ambitious targets of 55% women’s workforce participation by 2030 and 70% by 2047, the year India is looking towards for its Viksit Bharat vision, a goal that cannot be achieved without fully unlocking women’s participation in the workforce. Yet the data shows that Indian companies still have some ground to cover on women’s representation. Among India-headquartered Best Companies, women account for 31.4% of the workforce, compared with 41.1% at US-headquartered companies and 39.2% at companies headquartered in other countries. The gap widens further at the top, with women holding just 14.2% of Corporate Executive roles in India-headquartered companies, compared with 18% and 20% respectively in US- and other-foreign-headquartered organizations operating in India.
There is, however, a clear area where Indian companies are leading: support for women returning after career breaks. 83% of India-headquartered Best Companies have formal second-career hiring programs, ahead of US-headquartered companies at 70% and other-country-headquartered companies at 60%. This points to a stronger focus among Indian companies on creating pathways for women to re-enter the workforce after a career break.
Within India, there are also significant regional differences. Women’s representation is strongest in the South Indian metros of Bengaluru (41.1%), Chennai (39.1%) and Hyderabad (38.9%), while Delhi-NCR lags at 28.5%, nearly 12 percentage points below the highest-performing city. So, progress is not uniform, and there is considerable scope to learn from the organizations that are getting it right.
Where exactly are we losing women? At the early-career, mid-career or senior level?
Dr Saundarya Rajesh The clearest drop-off point is as women move into the middle and senior stages of the leadership pipeline. While overall representation of women at the Avtar & Seramount ‘Best’ companies is 34.6%, the number falls to 27% at the manager level. It falls further to about 21% at senior-manager level and 16.7% at the corporate executive level. Companies have generally become better at investing in women at entry and early-career levels. The bigger challenge is sustaining that progression through mid-career and into senior leadership. Women at these stages are often navigating multiple demands at once, from raising teenage children and eldercare to health and well-being needs, and may require more targeted forms of support.
At the same time, it is worth noting that women’s and men’s attrition rates are both around 20%. What is more telling is why women are leaving. Better job opportunities are the No. 1 reason, cited by 89% of women who leave. Health and wellbeing is also cited more often than childcare, at 30% versus 28%. This suggests that women remain highly career intentional. They are making choices about where they can find better opportunities, growth and wellbeing. Some may be moving to other organizations, while others may be choosing entrepreneurship, consulting, independent work or more flexible forms of employment. Employers must, therefore, see how to make their organization a place where experienced women can continue to see meaningful opportunities to grow and lead.
Are women getting the kind of roles, responsibilities and business exposure that typically lead to the C-suit
Dr Saundarya Rajesh: Look at these numbers: Women make up 27% of managers but only 16.7% of corporate executives. The narrowing is already visible before the C-suite. The senior-hiring figures tell a similar story. Women account for 19.8% of corporate-executive hires, compared with 36.3% of all hires. When it comes to earnings too, women’s representation among the Top 20% of earners at the Top 10 fell from 23.5% to 18.5%. So I think companies need to closely track who is receiving the assignments, visibility and succession opportunities that lead to enterprise-level leadership.
(Continued in Part 3)…
