Thursday, December 13, 2007

More women to board IT bus

Indias booming IT and IT-enabled services industry is a favourite destination of job-seeking women, whose employment in the industry is set to rise dramatically to 45 percent in 2010 from the current 30 percent, says an industry survey.

A survey by National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), the representative organisation of the Indian software firms, says this is due to the inclusive human resource policies of Indian IT firms, which recruit, train, retain and promote women employees as a strategic business plan.

Ratio to improve

“As the IT-ITeS sector moves up the value chain, more women are joining the industry. The male-female ratio is expected to improve to 65:35 by this year-end from 76:24 in 2005,” outgoing Nasscom president Kiran Karnik said here on Wednesday.

“For empowering the women workforce and creating conducive environment to grow equally at their workplace, we have commissioned Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad (IIM-A) to conduct a fresh study on the status of women employees in the IT industry and avenues for their growth in the value chain,” Karnik told about 300 women delegates participating in the Nasscom-IT Women Leadership Summit 2007.

The study is likely to be completed in the next five-six weeks. “It is a survey of what the IT industry does and can do in terms of attitude, perception and practices for an inclusive growth,” Karnik pointed out.

The study will also quiz women employees across the industry to ascertain their assessment of the existing HR policies, work conditions, how sensitive their male counterparts were towards them, and scope for professional advancement in their respective organisations.

“The study is being conducted on various parameters to assess the growth prospects of women workforce in the industry. For instance, the penetration of women at the management level is still inadequate. Even at top levels, women representation is disproportionate,” Karnik noted.

As the nature of their occupation, which includes looking after domestic chores, is burdensome, the study will explore prospects of employing women with flexi-timing so that they could divide their work between office and home.

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1 Comments:

At 12:59 AM, Blogger Neel Bhatt (Zero) said...

Hi,

More women joining the IT field would would be a welcoming scenario.

Fortunately, all women I have worked with were thoroughly professional and capable people, so I don't see any difference in a man or a woman IT professional.

IT, being a technology driven field can provide equal opportunities to
men and women to be gainfully employed.

Only dampener I see is long working hours which are not convenient to
women raising a child in Indian society. But with Flexi-timings and
working from home on the rise, long working hours may not have much of
a negative impact.

Regards,
Neel.

 

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