Women Employees In Indian Banking Sector

Indian banking sector has witnessed explosive growth and expansion ever since the ear of economic reforms was launched nearly two decades ago. This has created a new window of opportunities for women to find employment in the banking sector. In fact, the nationalization of the Indian banking sector in 1969 served as the first major step to reduce gender discrimination against women in banking jobs. However the general pattern of women’s employment in this sector has shown that there has been a sort of opposition invisible glass ceiling against women acquiring the top management positions in banking. With the opening up of banking to the private sector in India, there is a new hope that more employment transparency and purely merit based job opportunities will get a boost in this sector. This change is already becoming visible in the large foreign banks in India. A source from Citibank points out that in 1970’s; women comprised only 5% of the bank’s total workforce. But by the 1990’s women occupied a majority of clerical and computer programming jobs at Citibank. Sources say that the bank believes women tend to put in greater effort in their work and many times, are better qualified to perform the top than their men counter parts. The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) India also encourages a high recruitment rate for women. The general perception of the private sector bank recruiters appears to be that women are more diligent towards their duty and have a much smaller incidence of being involved in corrupt and fraudulent activities against the interest of the bank. However at the same time, another perception stereotype that goes against women rising to higher management positions in banking seems to be that women are not as ambitious as men and largely have a clerical working mindset. Women who are looking to strike a better balance between work and families responsibilities tend to prefer job in the banking sector. Banking job are perceived to provide a better stability, lesser travel, regular working hours, and a secure work environment, unlike may field jobs. Although for top management banking positions, the wind still appears to blow strongly in the favour of men in terms of sheer numbers. But there are shinning examples like Naina Lal Kidwai of the HSBC, Manisha Girotra of the Swiss Bank UBS in India and Chanda Kochhar of the ICICI Bank, who have made it to the very top in Indian banking. The new employment mantra for the banking organisations, as well as for the women aspiring to reach the top in India’s banking sector is perhaps best summed up in the words of chanda kochhar CEO and MD of ICICI Bank.