Pharma, GCCs Lead Corporate India's Diversity Push As Women Now Hold One In Five Leadership Roles: Report

Corporate India is making steady progress in narrowing the gender gap, with women's representation in leadership positions now at 20% — up from 13% in 2016, according to the 2025 Best Companies for Women in India list by Avtar Group and Seramount. The milestone reflects growing diversity in boardrooms, with the pharma sector leading the charge at 25% women in C-suite roles, followed by global capability centres at 22%.

Workforce participation also paints an encouraging picture. Professional services firms, including financial consulting and M&A, top the charts with 45% women employees, closely followed by IT-enabled services at 42%. Across companies, women now make up one in three employees.

The list was compiled from data shared by over 350 organisations with an employee strength of 500 or more. Of these, 125 were featured, with the top 10 including AXA, Accenture, Cairn Oil & Gas, EY, KPMG in India, Mastercard, Optum Global Solutions (India), Procter & Gamble India, Tech Mahindra and Wipro.

While representation has improved, hiring trends show stagnation, with women making up 38% of new hires for the past three years. GCCs, professional services, and IT-enabled services remain the biggest hirers, while manufacturing trails at just 19%. Encouragingly, science and engineering sectors stood out with 46% women in leadership roles.

Attrition rates have now reached parity at 20% each for men and women, though in the top 10 companies, women's attrition is even lower. Manufacturing, science and engineering reported the lowest attrition rates, at 11% and 12% respectively.

Maternity retention at 88–97% further underscores growing organisational support. The top three reasons women quit are better opportunities, relocation, and further studies, while earlier pain points like work flexibility and elder care have receded, as per the report.

Saundarya Rajesh, founder-president of Avtar Group, told CNBC-TV18, "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."