Batting for gender diversity at the workplace, Union Minister Smriti Irani today said she was instrumental in getting eminent scientist Tessy Thomas nominated to the IIT Council after being told that women were "not good enough" to be among the top engineers in the country.
Pointing out that she had "never used gender as a grudge", Irani said one needs to look at diversity not just from a business point of view but from people's point of view.
"When I became the HRD Minister, in the IIT Council, the first meeting that I held, I saw that there were all men in the room and I said, don't you have a woman representative. They said no, they (women) are not good enough to be amongst the top layers of engineers in this country.
"I was asked to nominate two people and the nomination list was all men... So I picked up my phone and called Tessy Thomas to be a part of this Council ... It is my privilege that she is one of the first women to get into the IIT Council," Irani said at the India Economic Summit here.
She said India had a rich legacy of diversity in all spheres and the country has women political leaders cutting across party lines, apart from their significant presence in fields like banking and media.
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