There are a significant number of women in the global IT industry, but their participation in roles that decide big and important business deals is still very low. The technology services industry often flaunts its diversity figures, but the reality is that most of the roles involved in making big deals worth millions and billions of dollars are still dominated by men. This makes it clear that although women are present in the workforce, their access to positions with decision-making power is still limited. However, now gradually some women leaders have started changing this situation. By reaching important positions, they are shaping big and strategic deals of the industry.
Impact of women’s presence in IT versus leadership
The IT sector has been saying for a long time that the participation of women in its workforce is strong. According to many companies, about 35 to 40 percent of their employees are women. But responsibilities like big enterprise deals, global sales and strategic partnerships have traditionally remained with men. Ramkumar Ramamurthy, partner at Catalincs, says the real paradox of the IT sector is that while there are many women, they are lacking in positions of influence. According to her, the industry is proud of the fact that 3540% of the workforce is women and there are many successful women leaders on the board. But there is still a lot of work left to do in preparing women leaders who can get big deals done.
Emerging women leaders in big IT deals
Despite the imbalance in history, many female executives are now playing important roles in big tech deals. Arundhati Chakraborty, who is the CEO of Accenture’s operations business, oversees a business that earns about $10 billion annually. She leads a global team of more than 2.2 lakh employees and manages transformation programs for large companies. At the same time, many senior women officers in Tata Consultancy Services are playing a role in the strategic growth of the company.
Uma Rizwani, who is the Senior Vice-President of the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance unit, is responsible for sales, delivery and operations with large clients. Similarly, Aarti Subramaniam, who is the Chief Operating Officer of TCS, has played an important role in the company’s deal to buy Coastal Cloud for $700 million.
Multinational companies are also bringing women forward
Many tech companies around the world are now promoting women into strategic and operational roles. Karine Brunet was made Chief Operations and Delivery Officer at Capgemini this year and also got a place on the company’s executive board. Shveta Arora, Global Consulting Head at Cognizant, played an important role in many big projects, including a partnership with education company Pearson.
Gender challenge of IT industry
Experts believe that this problem reflects the old structural challenge of the IT services industry. Even as companies have increased their recruitment of women, there needs to be stronger mechanisms in place to elevate them into client-facing leadership, sales, and large business deal-making roles.
As more women rise to influential positions in large global IT companies, this gap between the number of women in the industry and their actual decision-making power may gradually narrow.