Perceived Career Success and Career Advancement of Women: Challenges in the Indian IT Industry

Introduction

Although there is an increase in women's involvement in the field of qualifications, employment and professional commitment, there are still less opportunities for women to reach senior positions.Women who have achieved managerial roles faced challenges in their career development. While women have the equivalent abilities and expertise as their male counterparts, still they are expected to work harder and perform better to achieve managerial positions. Women represent just 30 percent of the technology sector in seven countries, and representation in leadership positions is still narrower (The Economic Times, 2020). In a study by Amudha (2016), the CEO of The National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) stated that women participation in the IT industry is 23 percent, out of which only three percent of women have reached top-level positions. In addition, it was mentioned that men women ratio in the IT industry is 4:1.Gender disparity exists at all hierarchical levels but it is extreme at top-level positions (Baxter and Wright, 2000). India stands 108^th position out of 145 countries in the globe with a cumulative score of 0.664 (0 = inequality and 1 = equality), according to the Global Gender Gap Study 2015 published by the World Economic Forum (Amudha, 2016). A report by Catalyst (2012) revealed that only 3 to 6 percent women are found at senior managerial positions in Indian corporate sector. The 15th Census, carried out in 2011, provides some data on female jobs in the Indian scenario. There are 481.7 million employees in India, of which 331.9 million (68.9 percent) are men, and 149.9 million (31.1 percent) are women workers. In addition, a small decline in women’s work participation rate (WPR) is noteworthy in this context. WPR was found to be declined from 25.6 percent in 2001 to 25.5 percent in 2011(Verma, 2018). In a study by Webster (2005), three major reasons for the lower representation of women in the IT industry have been working hours, biased promotion systems, and turnover rate of women in IT profession. Although the entry of female workers is also a fact and experience that the Indian economy is having. Hence, it becomes important to understand more about the career advancement of women professionals, so that female participation is continued and enhanced with time in the economy. Kishore (2016) mentioned that female family members are appointed on Board of Directors of the Indian IT industry just to comply with the legal necessity of Companies Act, 2013. NASSCOM Mencher report 2009 indicated that women employees are found more at lower and middle-level jobs where there is no supervisory role and less seen at top managerial positions like director, CEO, and Vice President (VP) positions.