Gunjan Sondhi

This piece was originally posted on the GSM-IT project website blog on Feb 25, 2017.

Within IT and IT services sectors, in which women are globally underrepresented, the participation of women as company leaders is very low.  There is little data on female top managers, or female participation in ownership within the IT sector for countries such as UK and US.

For majority of the countries, data collected through the Enterprise Surveys (World Bank) is an incredible useful for benchmarking.

Figure 1 above shows India’s position relative to other Latin American and Asian countries.  India (16.3%) has amongst the lowest percent of firms with female participation in ownership within the Tech sector; China has the highest at 47.8%.

The pattern is different for another group of women leaders. The chart below shows the percentage of firms with female top managers within the BRIC group of countries.

Among the BRIC countries, India (18%) accounts for the highest proportion of firms with female top managers in these sectors, whereas Brazil (6.4%) shows the lowest rates of IT firms with women holding top manager positions (s Figure 2).

The Women and IT Scorecard – India reveals more about women’s leadership pipeline in tech firms.  Keep an eye out on February 27 for its release.

Note: The source for the chart data is as follow:   Enterprise surveys for the following countries and years: Argentina 2006, Bulgaria 2007, Brazil 2009, Chile 2006, China 2013, Colombia 2006, India 2014, Mexico 2010, Russian Federation 2012.