In 2022–2023, the proportion of women employed in permanent positions rose in the services, healthcare, and real estate sectors, but stayed unchanged in the IT, packaged products, and financial services industries.

Despite companies in all industries revamping their hiring and retention efforts to bring on more women, there is still stagnation.

In contrast to the services sector, where women’s participation has increased from 12% in 2020–21 to 20% in 2022–23, the IT sector, for example, has seen women’s participation in the permanent workforce hover around 34–35% over the past three fiscal years, according to a study of more than 2,000 companies listed on the National Stock Exchange.

The number of permanent female employees in the formal sector climbed by 3 percentage points between 2020–2021 and 2022–2023, according to the Close the Gender Gap research conducted by the non-governmental organization The Udaiti Foundation. This indicates a minor increase in the representation of women following the pandemic.

Many women from both the permanent and temporary labor began to leave during the COVID-19 pandemic and following it, as the demands of the hybrid work regime caused more women to resign. At the senior ranks, where it is still very difficult to recruit female candidates, the slight increase is not evident.

We find that the proportion of women in key management positions (KMPs) declines as the size of the workforce increases. This demonstrates that big businesses can draw in talented women in their early career stages, but it is challenging for women to overcome the glass ceiling and climb the corporate ladder, the report stated.

It’s interesting to note that female leaders have stronger platforms to perform on at smaller organizations.

According to the report, the percentage of businesses having more than one woman on the board of directors is 43%; however, for businesses with more than two women directors, this number drops to 11%. However, 97% of businesses have more than two male board members. The industry with the greatest percentage of female directors on board is media, entertainment, and publications (25%), followed by healthcare (22%).