An Inquiry into Women Representation in Management: Case Study of Indian Industries

This book explores the status of women representation in management in Indian industries. Recognizing that women managers are facing barriers in achieving top level of management positions in industries, it adopts unique methodology of involving men and women managers as respondents to understand the key issues of gender diversity, glass ceiling, glass walls, glass cliffs, and gender inequality in the Indian corporate scenario. The book, via its six chapters, explores these key issues through the lens of feminist theories under four dimensions – personal, work, organisational and social – and contains an extensive literature review to understand the root causes of these issues. Secondly, it discusses a pilot study conducted to understand the perspectives about career growth of women managers. Outcome of this pilot study works towards conceptualising factors under four dimensions, mentioned above, influencing women participation in management, and to develop survey tools for further quantitative study. Thirdly, for the empirical analysis, the book employs exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to identify factors under each of these four dimensions; and structure of the relationship between factors and women representation in management is confirmed by the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

This book is beneficial for several stakeholders as it is a multidimensional study. It is useful for the undergraduate and post graduate students and research scholars of management, social sciences (such as economics, gender studies, psychology, political sciences, sociology etc), law, medicine, and engineering. Apart from this, it is also useful for corporate executives, decision makers of corporate governance, women elected representatives, administrators, development practitioners, teachers, legal experts, international agencies like UN who are working on women empowerment, and all those agencies working towards meeting SDG5 goal.

Samapti Guha is Professor at the Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, School of Management and Labour Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, India. She is a Development Economist and has done her PhD in Economics from Jadavpur University, India, in 2004. She worked as a researcher in the area of microfinance and development economics in reputed institutions such as Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, New Delhi, and Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA), Gujarat, India. In 2006, she was selected as Sir Ratan Tata Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK, for her post-doctoral study. In 2007, she joined TISS and launched a new MA programme in Social Entrepreneurship; she also managed the Centre for Social Entrepreneurship till 2010. Her areas of research are microfinance, women workforce including managers, social entrepreneurship, women entrepreneurship and financial inclusion. She has published more than 30 articles in national, international journals and chapters in books. She has published two edited volumes on 'Technology and Innovation for Social Change' (2015) and 'In Search of Business models in Social Entrepreneurship' (2021) with Springer. She has attended several national and international conferences and delivered key notes, expert talk and research articles.

Sanskruti Kadam is Dean/Head of Department, Sasmira's Business School, Mumbai, India. She has nearly two decades of experience in teaching, education and research, capacity building, advocacy and field action in broad areas of HRM, social science and development, gender studies and inclusive education. She obtained her PhD from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, India, and has double Masters -- Master of Commerce (M.Com), Master of Human Resource Development and Management (MHRDM) both from the University of Mumbai, India. With her wide experience in community-based research using qualitative and mixed methodology research approaches, she has contributed to a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the social and gender dimensions of a range of issues concerning women career development and wellbeing of women, youth and vulnerable populations. She has published several research papers in peer reviewed journals on topics covering HRM, re-branding HR, women empowerment, gender diversity et.al. She has also worked for fully sponsored research projects in the area of gender studies supported by Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR). She is Head of Research Committee and also the PhD Centre affiliated with University of Mumbai and SNDT Women's University at SASMIRA. She has been awarded with Best Paper Award for her research paper presented at National Research Conference organized by Mumbai University. Her research interest areas are – human resource management and development, general management, gender studies and diversity & inclusion.