Women in leadership roles in Gautam Buddh Nagar

Gautam Buddh Nagar is often referred as the show window of Uttar Pradesh and is easily one of the best developed district of the state.

And as one of the prominent district in the entire country, Gautam Budh Nagar also has the special responsibility of being a flag bearer when it comes to women empowerment. Action speaks louder than words and having women in leadership roles here, will do best to spread a message with far reaching consequences.

When it comes to the sex ratio, Gautam Budh Nagar has 852 females for every 1,000 males, and a literacy rate of 82.2%. The population is highly literate with 82.2% of population in the district are literate compared to 74.04% national average. The female literacy stands at 72.78% much higher than national average of 65.46%.

Talking of Women in leadership roles , UP Women Commission Chief Vimla Batham, happens to be a resident of Noida, occupying the highest post held by the resident of Gautam Budha Nagar District

Amongst the bureaucrats one of the senior most administrative officer of the district, i.e. Chief Executive Officer of Noida Authority is a woman – IAS Ritu Maheswari – and is working tirelessly to take the city to new heights.

But other than this, in administrative and legislative roles there is a strikingly nil representation of women in the leadership positions.

As of Greater Noida Authority’s official website, its key management, comprising of 20 senior officers, includes only two females – Meena Bhargav, General Manager (Plng. & Arch.) and Monika Chaturvedi, Dy. General Manager (Finance).

Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority doesn’t do any better, though has at least one female officer at a prominent leadership role – Mrs Monika Rani (IAS), currently deployed as ACEO at YEIDA. Other than IAS Rani, there is only Subha Singh, General Manager- HR and Neelam Srivastav, working on the position of Tehsildar (land) – all in all three female officials amongst a list of 50 odd officers displayed on the YEIDA website. Disparity much?

Amongst the administrative structure of the district, viz a viz collectorate system, there are 9 officials listed on the district website including DM, SDMs, ADMs, CM and CDO out of which only Vandita Srivastva, ADM (F/R) is a representative of the half population of the country.

Indeed when it comes to having equal representation of the women in leadership roles, Noida police certainly seems to be doing better than there administrative counterpart. Out of 14 officials named and listed on its website under the Senior Official category, three are women – Shriparna Ganguli, ACP (Crime), Meenakshi Katyayan, DCP (Crime) and Vrinda Shukla, DCP (Women Security).

Greater Noida and Noida being the hub of education, we cannot miss the presence and representation of Women leaders in the education industry. While most the school principals in both cities happen to be women, their presence at leadership roles in colleges and universities is also very prominent.

Be it Dr. Preeti Bajaj, who is presently the Vice-Chancellor of Galgotias University or Dr Dr Balvinder Shukla VC of Amity University , Dr Savita Mohan, Director of GNIOT MBA institute or Dr Neema Agarwal, additional director of NIET, Greater Noida, eminent educationists are certainly taking charge and driving change in the field of academics.

In health sector amongst big players – Dr Uma Sharma is the Chairperson of Kailash Group of Hospitals and in Industry Ms Shraddha Puri of Subros .

Need to enhance the efforts with regard to women empowerment in Gautam Buddh Nagar.

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