Top 200 cos in country employ less than 10% woman staff

Companies with female staff in range of 20 to 40% mainly comprise services sector companies

With the Women's Reservation Bill for more participation of the women in politics still waiting for Lok Sabha clearance, India Inc too does not appear to be a happy hunting ground for the fairer sex.

According to a CII survey, women employees account to less than 10% in more than half of the top 200 companies in India, while 50% of these companies have no women representative in the top management or board.

This comes at a time when the Women's Reservation Bill — to reserve 33% of all seats in the Lok Sabha and in all state legislative assemblies for women — is waiting for the clearance of the Lower House, after smooth passage through Rajya Sabha three years ago in March 2010.

Companies with female staff in the range of 20 to 40% mainly comprise service sector companies. Companies with female staff less than 10% mainly comprise mining, manufacturing, oil exploration, construction and engineering.

The report, called ‘Business Responsibility India Survey 2013’, was conducted by the CII‘s Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Development (CESD). In the first-of-its-kind survey of top-200 companies in India reveals good practice and intent in business responsibility but calls for enabling policy environment.

Survey findings suggest that many companies are already spending 2% or more on CSR. However, the companies find it difficult to exhaust this budget if areas and methods of spends are restricted. The major respondents to the survey were TCS, Cairn India, Mahindra & Mahindra, Ambuja Cements, Sterlite Industries (India), GAIL, YES Bank, BHEL, Godrej Consumer Products, Infosys, Larsen & Toubro, Maruti Suzuki, Tata Power, Simens, BPCL, Hindustan Unilever, ITC, JSW Steel, Titan Industries, Wipro, SAIL, Apollo Tyres, Central Bank of India; Piramal Enterprises, Shree Cement and Biocon.

It also stated that human rights, supply chain, and corruption are poorly regulated areas in India – therefore, currently rank lower as potential risk areas to companies. Almost all companies have procedures in place to identify and manage corporate risks with ‘environment’ being the most considered factor (91% companies) among others.

It added that more than 90% of the top 200 companies include CSR/Sustainable Development including CSR in their mission or vision statements, with 60% of the respondents having board level committees to engage on CSR/Sustainable Development related activities. In addition, 50% of the top 200 companies have their board of directors headed by an ‘Independent Director’.

The survey states that more than 97% of the companies publicise their initiatives on business responsibility or sustainability issues. On the other hand, almost all the respondents have health and safety management systems in place.

Though the number of women employees is less, more than 90% of the companies have a policy or procedures in place for sexual orientation, and prevention of harassment, coercion, and any form of intimidation and abuse (physical, sexual or verbal) towards employees.