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In mid-2005, Nasscom carried out a study on women professionals in the Indian IT industry. The research found that womens representation in the workforce that time was close to 24%. It also made a forecast that the number was likely to reach 35% by 2007.

Well, at the end of 2007, we are nowhere near that number. According to the research by Dataquest among selected large employers, women account for 26.4% of the total India-based work force in IT industry (excluding BPO). The DQ-IDC Best Employers Survey, which captured similar data from a larger base of IT employers in India, also throws up a similar number.

Consider this. About 49% of Indias population in the working age group (18-55) is women. That means a large chunk of potential workforce is completely untapped, even by an industry considered to be one of the most preferred employers of women. Add to that the fact that this industry is perpetually in the war for talent, and you do not have to be a genius to understand that it is a reason enough to get worried; or as one HR head puts it "to get very, very worried".

Business Imperative
In the last few years, almost all large- and medium-sized IT companiesespecially the export services firmshave put in place some policy or the other to better leverage this huge talent pool.

"In India, unlike in the US, diversity programs are by and large focused on gender diversity," says Nirmala Menon, founder of Interweave, a consulting firm that advises employersmany of them IT companies like Sun Microsystemson diversity programs. In the US, diversity programs often target racially diverse groups such as Blacks and Hispanic and other minority groups such as gays and lesbians. The guiding principle behind those diversity programs is largely socialistic, somewhat equivalent in principle to the reservation system in Indian government organizations.

"In India, however, it is a business imperative," says Menon. "Not being able to utilize literally half the potential workforce when you are struggling to attract and retain people is a serious business challenge than anything else. And it is an immediate challenge," she adds.

Most companies do agree that the best way to look at this issue is to take it as a business imperative. Though not everyone is at the same level when it comes to the maturity of these programs, even smaller companies have taken some steps. IBM, which globally is a pioneer in diversity programs, especially when it comes to women empowerment, is expectedly way ahead with virtually a specific initiative for almost every challenge faced by working women. Not surprisingly, in the DQ-IDC Best Employers Survey 2007, though it featured only as the 6th Best Employer overall, it ranked right on top when it comes to being a good workplace for women employees.

Though India-based global IT firms such as Infosys and Wipro are sensitized to the need of having gender diversity, their diversity efforts are today focused more on cultural diversityattracting and retaining employees from different cultures and nationalities.

Its Different in India
According to a study by the IT Association of America (ITAA), conducted in 2005, the percentage of women in the IT workforce declined from a high of 41% in 1996 to 32.4% in 2004. The study also found that during the same period, the percentage of women in the overall workforce in the US, remained largely unchanged; in fact increased a bit from 46% to 46.5%.

That, in a nutshell, tells the difference between the type of challenges before the American IT industry and the Indian IT industry. In the US, the problem is relative for the IT industry, as it attracts fewer women compared to other sectors. In India, though we do not have the exact data, the IT industry is not especially a poor employer of women; if anything, it is one of the most preferred industries among commercial sectors. Womens representation in the IT industry is not less (may be more) than any other industry.

"It will probably be a good idea, if you can do a study on the percentage of women in engineering colleges and find out what that number is," says Hemant Sharma, head, HR at Sun Microsystems India.

He has a point!

The industry, by itself, can do little about taking that percentage up drastically in the short run. In a largely linear manpower-revenue model, the industry grows by adding numbers at the lowest levels, by campus recruitment. With few lateral hires from other industries, the industrys sex ratio is but a factor of the same in engineering campuses. Though exact data is not available, the percentage of women is estimated to be between 25% and 30% in disciplines such as Computer Science and Electronics and far lower in traditional streams such as Civil, Electrical, and Mechanical. It is safe to assume that overall it is no more than 25%.

In that situation, it is tough at the industry level to expect a figure that is much higher. Because of other support functions such as HR, marketing, accounting, and other such non-technology jobs in the industry, where traditionally more women have been employed, the industrys overall sex ratio may be a little higher, but cannot be drastically different.

So, in effect, there are two challengesone is a battle that each company will have to fight on its own, to project itself as an employer of choice for women employees; the other is the war that the industry has to fight to convince more women to join the engineering stream, so that they can be tomorrows potential talent pool. The war is tougher but that is no reason to give up. In fact, a few companies already have taken steps in this direction.

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