New Delhi, Dec 18, 2022: The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry(FICCI), a non-governmental trade association and advocacy group based in India, recently organised ita 95th convention and AGM in Delhi.
The event witnessed stalwarts from various sectors and industries coming together to discuss and deliberate on various issues.
In one of such sessions, Shereen Bhan, Managing Editor at CNBC-TV18 News, talked to Kalpana Morparia, Soma Mandal, Naina Lal Kidwai, Prabha Narasimha and Sanjiv Mehta for the session on “Women in Leadership”.
Elaborating on the subject, Mehta highlighted the role of male leaders in ensuring gender parity at the workplace. Talking about the achievement of gender parity across the R&D department at Hindustan Unilever (HUL), he said: “Generally, STEM education in India or R&D specifically witnesses only 16% women. And, we have around 800 scientists and technologists under the leadership of Dr. Vibhav Sanzgiri. We have got gender parity not just in R&D but in HR, marketing, and legal departments.”
“Amongst all our managerial ranks, we have reached 45% women and in the next 2 years we will be gender-balanced,” he further added.
He also spoke about how his company is laser-focused on ensuring equality across sales departments and factories. He added that the Sumerpur factory of HUL aimed to achieve gender-balance at blue collar level.
“Women can do most jobs, if not all, that men can do..70% people who consume HUL’s products are women and we should represent our consumer-base in our company. If we are not bringing in equity, we are doing disservice to the business.” he noted.
Mehta further reiterated: “the onus was on men to ensure that we create an enabling environment where women can contribute not only to the household income but also to the progress of the country.”
