Corporate India still designed for men, needs structural change, says Ameera Shah

Despite progress in leadership diversity, much of corporate India continues to operate on a model built around men’s careers, leaving women to navigate biological milestones and professional expectations without adequate institutional support, said Ameera Shah, Executive Chairperson at Metropolis Healthcare.

She was speaking during the session titled Ambition vs Biology at Business Today’s Most Powerful Women 2025 summit.

Shah said the professional journey for women still involves dealing with visible and predictable blocks of time away from work, which organisations seldom plan for. “Corporate India still assumes linear working. It assumes people will keep working with no pauses or disruptions. But life is rarely linear, for men or for women,” she said.

Reflecting on her own two-decade journey as an entrepreneur and leader, Shah said balancing ambition and biology is not a question of choosing one over the other, but of making conscious choices.

“Every one of these stages has been a conscious choice. If I am here today, I am giving up dinner with my son tonight. All of us are always trading off something. But when we make those choices consciously, we have more control over our lives,” she said.

Shah described modern reproductive technologies as game-changing tools that offer women agency previously unavailable. “The birth control pill was the first big shift in giving women control. Egg freezing and IVF are the second wave of innovation that puts choice back in women’s hands,” she said.

Sharing her own experience, she added, “When I was 32 and realised my AMH levels were falling, I immediately went and did egg and embryo freezing. I was not ready to have kids, but I wanted the option later. I had my first child at 40 and my twins at 44 because I had planned for it.”

Shah said perceptions shift once a woman becomes a mother, often subtly but consistently. “Before children, when I went for meetings with my male manager, people would often talk to him and not to me. After I became a mother, the same people who discussed macroeconomics with me now first ask about my kids. Nothing has changed for me, but their perception has,” she said.

She added that leadership decisions by women are often viewed through the lens of motherhood. “When a man moves to an executive chairperson role, he is called progressive. When a woman does it, the assumption is that she wants to spend time with her children,” she said.

Shah said businesses need to rethink their structures if they want to retain more women in leadership. “Most businesses are still run by men. The first step is accepting the data that says companies perform better with gender diversity. Once that registers, CEOs will automatically build towards it,” she said.

She suggested that hybrid working should not be optional. “If hybrid is optional, men will show up six days a week and women will not. That widens the divide. Hybrid needs to be mandatory for everyone in some form,” she said.
Shah also called for formal re-entry programmes for women who take one to five years off for caregiving. “There is a massive gap today. Women step away when their children are young and there is no structured path to return. This is one of the biggest missing pieces,” she said.

Asked whether there is an ideal time for motherhood for women with ambitious career plans, Shah said there is no universal answer, though planning helps.

“There is no ideal. I had my child at 40 and twins at 44, and it allowed me twenty years to build my business. But I planned for it. I created the backup. If we value the emotional and the professional sides of life, I believe you can have both, assuming there is no medical challenge. It is about balancing, prioritising and planning,” she said.