Women now hold 20% leadership roles, pharma and GCCs lead the way: Report

Corporate India is making steady progress on bridging the gender gap, with women’s representation in leadership roles now touching 20%. As per Avtar Group & Seramount's 2025 list of Best Companies for Women in India, this is a milestone compared to 13% in 2016. The pharma sector is leading the way with 25% women at C-suite levels, followed closely by global capability centres at 22%.

In terms of workforce participation, the professional services sector, which includes financial consulting and M&A, tops the chart with 45% women employees. IT-enabled services are not far behind at 42%. Overall, women make up one in three employees across companies.

The Best Companies for Women in India list was compiled after more than 350 organisations with an employee strength of over 500 shared data with Avtar. Companies were evaluated on diversity representation, recruitment, retention and advancement, workplace culture, safety and security, and parental leave policies. Of these, 125 were featured, with the top 10 comprising AXA, Accenture, Cairn Oil & Gas, EY, KPMG in India, Mastercard, Optum Global Solutions (India), Procter & Gamble India, Tech Mahindra and Wipro.

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Subhadeep Khan, CHRO, Cairn Oil & Gas, said, "We had a vision of having 50% diversity at all levels. We are at around 20% and we have not limited this to operational levels. We have 20% of the females in decision-making positions also. But with our commitment, I will say we are halfway there. And we are sure that maybe next time our numbers will be far better than where we are."

While representation has improved, hiring trends show stagnation. The proportion of women among new hires has remained flat at 38% for the last three years. GCC, professional services and IT-enabled services are the biggest hirers of women. Over 40% of hires in these three sectors are women. Pharma and FMCG are catching up fast, with more than 30% of all hires being women, while manufacturing reported the lowest hiring ratio of women at 19%. Science and Engineering stood out with 46% women for leadership roles.

As per Avtar’s findings, attrition rates have now reached parity, with companies reporting similar levels of 20% among men and women reporting similar levels at 20%. Among the top 10 companies, women’s attrition rate is lower than that of men. Manufacturing, science, and engineering reported the lowest attrition rates of 11% and 12% respectively.

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The report also finds that the top three reasons for women to quit their jobs are better opportunities, relocation and further studies. Factors that once dominated, like work flexibility, elder-care responsibilities and workplace challenges, rank the lowest. Companies have also reported high maternity retention rates of 88-97%, since tracking began in 2017, underscoring stronger organisational support for women returning to work post-childbirth.

Saundarya Rajesh, founder-president, Avtar Group, said, "Biases are unconscious. If an organisation has to become the best company for women to work, they must follow a structured process of de-biasing and implement training programmes to identify these biases and debias themselves."