"Gender Wage Gap in Top Leadership Roles Widest" finds UpGrad-Led Harappa's Survey

Harappa, a division of upGrad, Asia's leading integrated learning, skilling, and workforce development organization, launched "The Grand Women & Workplace Report," the country's most thorough investigation of women's professional aspirations, obstacles to their careers, and workplace reality.

The results, which are based on input from more than 1,500 professionals in India Inc. and are layered across career milestones, highlight several important concerns facing women in the workplace. The provocative observations include:

Women place the highest priority on professional advancement (82% of respondents) and improved pay (78%), as well as an environment that fosters these goals. Contrary to common opinion, less than a third of the polled women identified work-life balance and flexible work possibilities as important topics.

The playing field is far from a level more than a century after the first International Women's Day was marked. Tragically, the highest levels of leadership are where the gender pay disparity widens. Women in CXO positions make 74 rupees for every rupee that males make at such levels.

Even though women in business are excellent at closing deals and generating income, they aren't given enough authority to make investment choices. The largest disparity between men and women department leaders is between profit and loss mandates, where women still lag behind men by 65% to 29%, respectively.

Men are more likely to interrupt their professional efforts to continue their education (48%), whereas most women who take work vacations do so for parenting (58%). Starting a family is only the beginning of the difference; women spend 2.5X more hours providing care each day throughout their professions.

"Unfortunately, women's careers remain the most difficult challenge in history, plagued with broken rungs, glass cliffs, glass ceilings, and deep valleys of wage inequalities and role inequities. These are important issues that need to be addressed and fixed.

Shreyasi Singh and Pramath Raj Sinha, co-founders of Harappa, said in a joint statement that India will need all of its talent to contribute meaningfully and advance fairly if it is to become one of the world's top economies. "We hope that our report is one more reminder to continue to endeavour to fix these," they added.

"The report Women and Workplace on the difficulties women encounter at work is a wake-up call. It reveals the essential issues we need to take care of to make sure every employee, regardless of gender, feels appreciated and respected. Ronnie Screwvala, Co-Founder & Chairman, upGrad, said, "We must do better to assist and empower women, not only because it's the right thing to do, but because it's crucial to our long-term success.