This was published in The Quint here.
In an ideal world, gender should not be a relevant subject except maybe in legal documentation. But ours isn’t an ideal world and gender is a contentious topic – inciting passion in some and exasperation in others.
You can sense tensions around gender everywhere – from mild ones in metro trains over seats to severe ones like reservations for women.
Somewhere between these two, lies the issue of placements in B-Schools – where on the one hand, companies wish to bridge the gender divide and on the other, don’t want to be seen as biased “against the men”.
As more companies are pushing for an increase in the percentage of women managers, some B-Schools are seeing this in their placement processes too.
Subtle biases are seen at play – like how a soft drink giant has been hiring only females for the past three years from a Delhi-based B-School that was ranked among the top eight this year by Business Today. This was revealed by four students from the management school, including two from the placement committee. Nothing is official, but everyone, from the placement committee to the students, knows about this “aberration”.
A management student from a Mumbai-based B-School highlights another startling fact – at the summer placements this year in July, eight men and two women were part of the group discussion (GD) for one of the oldest publishing companies in India. During the GD, although one woman was actively contributing to the discussion, the other wasn’t. The results shocked everyone in the room: Three students were selected for the next round – both women, including the one who wasn’t participating at all, and one man. The shock was compounded by the fact that the woman’s academic grades were also lower than some of the other men present in the room.
During the placement process for another company in the same Mumbai college, there were 15 women and 35 men applicants. Of these, 10 women and 2 men were shortlisted. Statistically speaking, this made little sense, the student added.
Rajneesh Singh, who has handled Human Resources at Network 18 and Gillette, and is now Managing Partner of SimplyHR Solutions LLP says that if companies are doing this, there is a clear bias at play. He adds that while campus recruitment teams are increasingly being asked by the hiring managers to recruit women, showing any bias rather than basing hiring decisions only on pure merit will only disillusion the students about the fairness of the company.
Rajneesh recalls a personal example about how Mr. PRS, “Biki” Oberoi, executive Chairman and family patriarch of The Oberoi Group of hotels would ask him to hire more females than men – especially for the Oberoi Centre for Learning and Development.
Devneet Mahajan, an Executive MBA student and Placement Operations at Management Development Institute, Gurgaon says companies are being directed to hire more women candidates in organisations “irrespective of minor discrepancies” in qualifications.
Ironically, even with this hiring more women to high-paying white collar jobs, the number of senior-level female employees in India still sits at a dismal 5 percent, compared with a global average of about 20 percent.
Sairee Chahal, Founder of Sheroes, a community where women can find mentorship, career resources and career content along with career advice says that even though colleges have been going to campuses to hire women for years, there are still not enough women in the workplace. Sairee is right. The number of female managers has moved up from 2006-08, but not fast enough. It has increased just two percentage points, from 12 percent to 14 percent.
On the trend of women being picked over men, Sairee says, Men are going to be a little insecure about this. A situation like this is going to imbalance some stuff... but if you look at the larger picture, even if this happens, the fact remains that there are still not enough women in the workplace.
However, not all B-school graduates feel the gender pinch.
Niki Gokani Vrajdas, External Relations Secretary for IIM Calcutta says women in the past 3 years in the B-School have been performing at par with the men, not just in exams but even in extra curricular activities. They even get more scholarships that have been coming to the campus.
Niki believes that campus hiring, at least in the IIMs, does not see any biases but doesn’t rule out bias in the case of recruitments happening outside campus.
So, the good news is that more women are joining at the management level, but the question that needs to be answered cautiously is whether it’s being done justly.