Despite gradual improvements in board diversity, India’s largest listed companies still have a stark underrepresentation of women in chief executive and managing director roles, highlighting ongoing barriers to gender parity at the top.
India’s top 500 listed companies employ only 9 women chief executive officers and 25 women managing directors, according to data tabled by the corporate affairs ministry in the Lok Sabha on Monday. The government also said it had not assessed what barriers may be limiting women directors from advancing into senior leadership roles.
The reply came after rebel Trinamool Congress MP Sayani Gosh asked whether the government had examined women’s representation in top corporate posts and the main obstacles affecting promotion. The ministry’s figures show 67 women executive directors and 22 women chief financial officers across the 500 companies, which are ranked by turnover.
The broader picture remains equally uneven. Research cited by Fortune India and SP Jain Institute of Management and Research found that only 1.6% of firms in the Fortune India 500 are led by women, while the figure rises to 5% in the Next 500. A separate Primeinfobase report said women make up about 23% of employees in listed companies but only 5% of chief executive or managing director positions, illustrating how representation thins sharply at the top.
Board-level diversity has improved, but only gradually. An Institutional Investor Advisory Services study found that women accounted for nearly 18% of directorships in the top 500 NSE-listed companies, up from 6% in 2014 and 14% five years earlier. Even so, Prime Database data cited in another report suggested that only 135 listed companies, or 6%, have a woman chairing the board, and nearly half of those chairpersons come from promoter families.
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