Slow gender parity progress highlights the need for a robust pipeline of women leaders in India: Deloitte report

Mumbai, 08 March 2024: The eighth edition of the Deloitte Global Boardroom Program’s Women in the boardroom: A global perspective report reveals a gradual increase in the number of board seats held by women across India Inc., with women holding 18.3 percent board seats in 2023, up from 13.8 percent in 2018.

However, it is lower than the global average of 23.3 percent, which has seen an increase of 3.6 percent since 2022 reducing the timeline toward achieving parity by seven years – from 2045 to 2038. This indicates that even if India were to match the global pace, achieving gender parity on boards would still remain a distant goal until a robust pipeline of women leaders is developed.

"Boardroom diversity requires a paradigm shift. Since many companies prefer to recruit board members with CEO or CFO experience, these numbers do not paint an optimistic outlook for pipeline development. Companies need to expand their skills profiles to further diversify their boards while shoring up critical skill gaps. India Inc. must break from historical patterns and prioritise capabilities over past roles. By nurturing governance expertise creatively and regularly evaluating the progress, a robust pipeline of talented women leaders can be cultivated for a brighter future in corporate governance," said Shefali Goradia, Chairperson, Deloitte South Asia.

The latest edition of the report analysed more than 18,000 companies in 50 countries and geographies, exploring representation of women in the boardroom, as well as insights on the political, social, and legislative trends behind these numbers.

Deloitte Global has developed the “stretch factor,” a research tool that measures the average number of board seats an individual holds in a particular market. The higher the stretch factor, the more seats are held by any single director in a given market. The stretch factor among women in India increased to 1.32 in 2023 as compared to 1.30 in 2021. While the average stayed the same for men at 1.20. This further indicates a low pipeline of women leaders and stresses on the need to create a larger pool of women leaders with varied skillsets.

Although India saw a decline in board chairs held by women in 2023, with only 4.1 percent of women chairing boards as compared to 4.5 percent in 2018, it witnessed an increase in the number of women taking up CEO roles − 5.1 percent female CEOs against 3.4 percent indicated in 2018.

Globally, the percentage of women chairing boards is nearly three times lower than the percentage of women serving on boards, with just 8.4 percent of the world’s boards being chaired by women. Also, only 6 percent of CEOs in the world are women, representing just a 1 percent increase from 2021. At the current rate of change, global parity for CEOs wouldn’t be reached until 2111—almost 90 years from now.

In India, sectoral trends paint an optimistic picture for women representation across boardrooms. All of the sectors examined in the survey showed an increase in the number of women on boards in 2023 as against 2018. Life sciences & health care sector is topping the chart with 21.3 percent women on company boards, followed by technology, media and telecommunications (20.5 percent), consumer business (19.7 percent), manufacturing (17.4 percent), and financial services (16.9 percent).

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This press release has been issued by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP.