IT women Come to the Fore

If there is one fruit the country can really rejoice having reaped as a

fallout of the rise of the ITeS industry, it is that it has led to a sudden

spurt in the employment rates for women. Most call centers have women employees

in excess of 40 %. Some centers even have a share of women as high as 60 % in

their workforce.

Most companies claim there’s no preference for women... It is just that there’re more ‘ideal’ women candidates more suited to the job profile

Indian BPO is predominantly voice-based and that too outbound calls. Of its

total workforce of 5,000 employees, Wipro-Spectramind Services has a women to

men ratio of 49% to 51%; Mumbai-based Infowavz International has a total of

1,000 employees, of which, 380 are women, which is approximately 40% of its

workforce.

TracMail India with an employee base of over 1,800 agents has 35% women in

its workforce while ICICI OneSource with a base of over 2,400 employees has 60%

women in its workforce. Daksh e-Services also claims to have over 60% women

across its overall workforce. Some organizations like GE, with massive

operations in India, have an internal mandate to have over 60% of their

workforce made up of women.

Most organizations claim that there is no clear preference for women and it

is just that there are more ideal women candidates whom they find suitable for

the given job profile. At the same time, it is also acknowledged that the

attrition rate for women employees is higher given the high stress levels, the

long working hours and the problem of working at night. Besides, most employees

working in call centers are in the 19-24 years age group and women who get

married during that time tend to leave the job soon after their marriage.

However, this trend of more women employees in call centers is more visible

in the North and the Western part of the country.

In the South, although there has been considerable increase in the number of

women employees in call centers, yet it is quite low. This is attributed to the

unconventional working hours that call centers have.

Organizations also take care to reassure parents and guardians of women

working in call centers about the safe environment in which they work. Claims

Zia Sheikh, CEO, Infowavz International, "We ask parents of women employees

to come to our centers and see the environment in which the people work."

Companies also arrange for pick-up and drop facilities for employees due to the

odd working hours.

However, even though the number of women at the agent and middle management

level is high, the numbers come down drastically in the top management level.

Women seem to predominate in roles, which require customer support and in the

training department.

The high rate of women employees (45% on an average) in the ITeS sector is a

welcome change from the low 12.5% women being employed in the IT industry.

According to a Dataquest-IDC survey in October 2002, the highest number of women

employed was by NIIT (at 29%) while Rolta India employed the lowest number of

women (at 4%). The biggies like Infosys Technologies employed 17% women, Tata

Consultancy Services 20% and Wipro 19% women.

Balaka Baruah Aggarwal



CNS