Women of Mettle

As the core sectors see participation of women across levels, their proportion will only increase. But how quickly will that happen?

- KRISHNA GOPALAN

FOR ATRAYEE SANYAL, the 26-year journey at Tata Steel has been a happy one. With a smile, she tells you how apprehensive she initially was about moving from a glamorous Mumbai-based job with Hindustan Unilever (HUL) to what then to her appeared to be a staid industry in Kolkata.

"Yes, I was circumspect to be in a marketing function at a steel company," she says. That was in 1998 when a woman in sales and marketing was rare and even rarer in the steel sector. The temptation to throw in the towel every couple of months is today just a distant memory. Today, Sanyal has moved well within the organisation and is Vice President (Human Resource Management) and based out of Jamshedpur.

For Sanyal, putting together a brand management team at Tata Steel has been one of the high points.

Equally satisfying is how Tata Steel has more women leaders or just more women in the workforce number was 1,800 in 2015 and has grown to twice as much since. "When I moved to HR, I wanted to transform the workplace with a big focus on diversity," she says. By then, the steel giant had already taken a few big steps like flexi working hours or menstrual leave. Since then, there has been a marked change in mindset about women working in the core sectors, which shows that change is well and truly underway.

MAKING A MARK

The increase in women's representation across core sectors has been a slow but encouraging story. Data put out by the government shows there are more women in manufacturing in urban India (see graphic Women on the Shop Floor') than men. A visit to any of the large factories in the industrial parts of, say, Chennai, Vadodara, or Bengaluru makes this pretty obvious.