ICICI Bank is India’s second largest and fastest-growing bank and perhaps the country’s best example of how to assimilate women throughout an organisation.
KV Kamath, the company’s (male) Managing Director and Chief Executive, has made it company policy to encourage the recruitment and development of women and, as a result, females hold about a dozen of the top 40 management posts, two out of five executive board seats, run two out of five subsidiaries, and account for about 30 per cent of total staff.
Kalpana Morparia is one of two joint Managing Directors at ICICI Bank. A lawyer by training, Ms Morparia has headed many functions in the bank and has been described as “the backbone of ICICI”. When she retires in May at the age of 58, she will become Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of ICICI Holdings, a new company being spun off to control the bank’s booming insurance and asset management businesses.
According to Ms Morparia, women in business have the advantages of being “especially sensitive to employees and the environment, rather than being just task-oriented”. She firmly believes that women should not, and do not want to be, treated differently from men. “The moment you do something special for women, you lose them, because they don’t want that,” she says.
She has stayed in ICICI, despite relatively low salaries, “because the empowerment is great – it gives an entrepreneurial framework with all the support systems you need”.
Ms Morparia says that, increasingly, it does not matter whether one is a man or a woman in India’s services business, especially in finance and hospitality. By contrast, in manufacturing, it is rare for women to get to the top, except as a member of a business family. For example, in southern India, Rajshree Pathy is the Chairman & Managing Director of her family’s Rajshree Sugars and Chemicals.
The high proportion of female senior executives at ICICI creates an atmosphere of comradeship, which Ms Morparia says that both she and her colleagues value. That said, they don’t mind being the only woman in a meeting.
In contrast to some of the other interviewees questioned for this report, Ms Morparia does not feel that women’s networks help. “The more the emphasis on the difference in gender, the more we are making it difficult for us to be accepted as successful,” she says. Referring to another sort of network, several ICICI employees point out that help given by relatives within the Indian extended family support system makes it easier to build careers than it might be in other countries.
What advice would Ms Morparia offer to other women who are seeking similar success? “Completely erase from your mind that you need to be treated differently from men,” she says. She then adds, with a trace of humour typical of the ICICI women, “Men are just as smart as women are”.
