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For a long time in corporate India, diversity initiatives equaled initiatives to remove gender bias and promote equality of the sexes in terms of opportunity, pay, career growth & everything else. Simply put an organization which consciously or unconsciously creates a preference or prejudice towards one gender over another practices gender bias, unfortunately in India where women compromise only about 28% of the organized workforce the bias is against them. It is factually correct to say that having greater women participation will positively impact the GDP of India, a Mckinsey 2015 study stated that increasing women’s labor force participation by 10 percentage points could add $700 Bn to India’s GDP by 2025. Unlike the western world we are still in the early stages of removing gender bias and efforts are centered around three pillars – Hiring Women across roles, Equal Pay for Equal Work and Participation/Representation in leadership forums. 

One of the most significant areas to remove gender bias is Hiring. There are roles which are considered more suitable for men than women, example – sales or shop floor jobs in manufacturing plant. It is important to match job requirement with candidate skills and not gender, unfortunately at times the hiring manager’s perception & assumptions negatively impact the decision. 48.5% of India’s population is female however they constitute only about 28% of the workforce and this is an important indicator of how prevalent this bias is. Amway India has one of the highest gender diversity at its manufacturing plant in Tamil Nadu, this has been possible by breaking gender stereotypes and hiring on merit. 60% of Amway direct sellers, individuals who are selling Amway products, are women across the country. 

Equal pay for equal work is a fundamental right, however, a 2017 report by the Ministry of statistics & program implementation indicates that women in urban areas with a graduate or higher degree earn 24% less than their male counterparts. For an organization to remove any gender bias & encourage inclusion it is important that all employees feel equally valued and are paid in line with their performance & not their gender. At Amway India processes have been put in place to ensure salary fitment at the time of offer and subsequent increments are in line with skill set & experience and performance respectively. This also includes a practice of checking for outliers & anomalies both at the time of offer. In fact the annual increment is referred to as Merit Increment to drive a culture of equality linked to merit. 

Participation of women in forums which are involved in critical decision-making is yet another measure of an organization’s success in eliminating gender bias. This could be in the form of women being part of the CXO level, Board of Directors or special decision-making bodies of an organization. Having a gender diverse leadership team ensures diversity of thought which is critical to building a creative, vibrant & thriving workplace. When we have diverse voices at the table and honor and acknowledge different perspectives during decision making, better choices are made. Data indicates that companies with greater gender diversity outperform those with less often by as much as 30%. Amway India has put in place a Leadership Advisory council or LAC is a team of our distributors or Amway Business owners which acts as an advisory body to the India leadership team for all critical business decisions. This team has equal representation from both genders and has greatly contributed to the strategic decision-making process for the organization.

Progress is being made, however slowly. Gender parity is not just good for women, its good for societies & economies. Ensuring we have gender supportive workplaces and hence societies needs to be everyone’s priority.