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My husband took a break from work for two years and I was the one paying the bills," says 39-year-old Manisha Lath Gupta, Chief Marketing Officer of Axis Bank. "People would often ask me 'How can you let your husband sit in the house while you work?'" It did not bother her at all. Gupta's attitude represents the changing mindset in the workplace in India.
No doubt India still has some way to go before women stand on an equal footing with men at the workplace. The World Economic Forum Gender Gap Index shows that only five per cent of working women in India have made it to senior leadership positions, much lower than the global average of 20 per cent.
Overall too India ranks 113 of 135 countries on the index. Even so, there is no doubt that there are more Indian women leaders in business than ever before, thanks to the resilience and gung ho spirit that women like Gupta display. Leading the charge are role models such as Chanda Kochhar, Managing Director and CEO of ICICI Bank, Kalpana Morparia, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairman and Managing Director of Biocon, and more. A new generation of young women has also followed in their footsteps, such as Sangeeta Pendurkar, 46, MD of Kellogg's India, or Kirthiga Reddy, 40, Head, Facebook India.
SPECIAL: India's Most Powerful Businesswomen
ICICI Bank is one institution that has had a host of women in senior management positions . But Axis Bank too is not far behind, with CEO Shikha Sharma, Manisha 'Lath' Gupta, and Manjiri Rele, who is Senior Vice President (HR) in top roles. There are also lesser known examples of such companies, such as the Mumbai-headquartered NRB Bearings which has both a woman MD, Harshbeena S. Zaveri, and a woman Chief Financial Officer, Jyotsna Sharma. "My first job happened because the company was looking for a high-skilled chartered accountant, but would pay so little that only a woman would have agreed to take it up out of compulsion," says Sharma.