When Indra Nooyi, a married mother of two from a modest middle-class background, was elected the chairman of PepsiCo in 2007, it was more than just a personal feat.
For many Indians, the rise of Mrs Nooyi - the highest-ranked Indian-born woman among US companies - symbolised the coming of age of female executives in the business world, where the highest offices are traditionally considered a male bastion.
"If you are a woman and especially a person of colour, there are two strikes against you," Mrs Nooyi, 56, said at a lecture at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, a few years before she got the job. "Immigrant, person of colour and woman - that is three strikes against you. So I have to work extra hard. More hours, yes. More sacrifices and trade-offs, yes. That has been my journey."
Mrs Nooyi, who left India at 23 to study at Yale Management School, held various jobs at Johnson & Johnson, Boston Consulting Group and Motorola before she landed the job at PepsiCo. Her pay package last year was worth US$10.66 million (Dh39.1m).
She was ranked number one on Fortune magazine's list of the 50 most powerful women and number six on Forbes magazine's list of the World's 100 most powerful women last year.
But while Mrs Nooyi breached the imaginary glass ceiling with aplomb, it is lonely at the top. Only a handful of Indian women have managed to ascend the highly competitive - and largely testosterone-driven - corporate ladders.
Of the 1,112 directorship positions among the Bombay Stock Exchange 100 companies, only 48 women have been appointed, according to Community Business, a Hong Kong-based non-profit organisation dedicated to the field of diversity and inclusion. That constitutes only 5.3 per cent of such positions, significantly lower than Canada, 15 per cent, and the US, 14.5 per cent.
While companies in the new sectors of India's economy are attempting to change that trend, they are lagging the multinationals. India's Women in Leadership Forum said last year that top businesses such as the IT company Tata Consultancy Services, the IT services company Zensar Technologies and JSW Steel have 5 per cent to 6 per cent of senior positions occupied by women.
By contrast, multinationals such as PepsiCo, KPMG and Citibank have ratios of 15 per cent to 20 per cent.
One reason for male dominance, says Rajesh Chakrabarti, an assistant professor of finance at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, is cultural.
"Two thirds of our top 500 companies belong to family business groups and their succession typically progresses with a strong male preference," he says. "Among general executives, too, family responsibilities often hurt career progressions of women in the early 30s and they lose ground to their male rivals who rise to the top."
Prof Chakrabarti says there are only 766 females out of 14,104 directors among 1,690 Clause 49-compliant Indian companies.These companies are required to submit a quarterly compliance report to the stock exchange.
A 2009 survey entitled Creating Women Business Leaders: Differentiating Styles of Women Executives, conducted by Women in Leadership and KPMG, said women bring substantive diversity to company boards in terms of their composition, skill sets and experiences.
Companies that nurture leadership qualities of their women executives see better performance and financial results, it added.
"Our research evidence reveals that women leaders are self-critical of their own strengths and weaknesses and tend to rebound gracefully from setbacks," said Sangeeta Singh, the executive director for human resources at KPMG. "They tend to be intuitive crisis managers enabling fair and sound judgement. Further, they drive a democratic and inclusive approach by building an ecosystem and nurturing talent."
Last year, a report on the Asia-Pacific region by the UN Development Programme noted that fewer than 35 per cent of women in India and Pakistan do paid work.
A lack of women's participation in the workforce, the report warned, costs such nations billions of dollars every year.
According to its conservative estimates, the GDP could increase by 2 per cent to 4 per cent annually if the employment rate of women grew to 70 per cent.
India's problem of "missing girls" is another growing problem. The gender ratio in India is the most skewed in the world.
The latest census this year registered a ratio that has fallen from 976 girls per 1,000 boys in 1991 to 914 girls per 1,000 boys, indicating that abortion plays a major role. Sons, considered pivotal to family welfare, continue family lineage and are sources of social and financial security to parents, while daughters have traditionally been considered a burden for the social obligation of having to pay a dowry.
Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, describes the dwindling number of girls as a "national shame".
Attitudes are slowly changing, especially in the cities. The era of economic reforms and liberalisation has led to a consistently high economic growth rate for several years, creating more employment opportunities for women.
Gender diversity initiatives and programmes to train women for leadership roles have also become the hallmark for a number of companies. According to a Catalyst India Benchmarking report last year, 17 per cent of Indian companies offered target leadership development programmes for women.
"It is difficult to argue that a glass ceiling is in effect in India," says Prof Chakrabarti.
"It is the overall social conditions and preference for family roles that have kept women from rising to board levels. But we do expect this to change rapidly in the years to come."
