It's taken me a few weeks to process the ideas sparked for me during the GAVL Women in Agribusiness Summit held on March 5th, 2024. One particular line of conversation between all the speakers stayed with me: Was a woman hired just because of her gender? If there were better candidates, why choose a woman? Should gender be prioritized over skill sets? Why should we prioritize diversity and "make exceptions"?

I identify as a woman, and these questions have come up in different shapes and forms during my life. It would be easy to say that they offer a set of dangerous false choices, but the assumptions underlying these questions are so prevalent and internalised by women, that I know we have to resolve them over and over, both for ourselves and for many of those we work with. Over the last few weeks, I have stayed with these uncomfortable questions, gathered data and reflected on them from various perspectives to be able to respond meaningfully.

I started by trying to articulate an answer to 'What is the business case for having more women?' According to ten years of research by McKinsey and LeanIn.org, companies with more women on executive committees have 47% higher ROE (Return on Equity). The companies in the first quartile of gender diversity are 27% more likely to outperform their national industry average profitability while the bottom quartile is less likely to meet the industry average profitability.

While the Godrej Industries group falls outside the sample of this particular research, we know that these lessons apply to our company and, more broadly, our ecosystem. A woman can bring something to any organisation which a man cannot offer. Diverse experiences and viewpoints are good for the business. The discussions are richer, the decision-making becomes better, and the organisation is more resilient. In GAVL, while working with Creamline Dairy, I could observe that having more women on the team helped create more ideas for connecting with the target customer segment: women in the family who make decisions about the milk, curd or ghee brand to be used in the house. This is the diversity perspective to hiring more women.

So, if we know it's good for business, why is the number of women in business lower? Go to a bookstore and look for biographies of senior women business leaders, then compare the handful to the shelves of similar books.

More fundamentally, as an agribusiness - in other words, a business deeply connected to the farming economy of India - we know that women have historically been marginalised from economic benefits even when they are essential to economic activity. Even though women are the backbone of agriculture and comprise 43 percent of the global agricultural workforce-and as much as 50 percent in many regions-the number of women in management positions in agribusiness is not even 30 percent. Equitable leadership is still a faraway dream.

Structural challenges put women at a significant disadvantage in the matter of land rights. Globally, less than 15% of landowners are women, and this in turn means that our access to capital and financial resources is even lower. During a stint with a microfinance organisation, I observed that in the few cases where women had land or cattle ownership and had access to finance, the decision-making still remained with the male member of the family.

Because women's underrepresentation in business comes from deep-rooted structural inequalities, it makes sense to create incentives and an enabling environment to promote more aspirational examples for women. This is the compensatory perspective to hiring more women.

Finally, and with due respect to many supportive individuals, if the managers in a business are mostly men, they have little reason to make space for women. We are more comfortable with people similar to us. According to Dr Connson Locke from the London School of Economics, the prototype image we have of a leader clash with the image of a woman. We expect leaders to be confident, charismatic, and assertive in their words and body language. Thanks to generations of cultural stereotypes, these qualities are not associated with women. In addition, when women are assertive, others may receive their behaviour as counter-stereotypical. We balance being agentic with a certain degree of warmth and demonstrative care, which is what is expected of us (but not of men).

If the expectation gap is critical, the pay gap is its counterpart in black and white. The Nobel laureate Claudia Goldin describes the "motherhood effect" that hinders career progression and earnings increments for women. But social perceptions, differences in negotiating skills, and bias can create roadblocks to equitable pay for women from early career stages, too. Supporting women by minimising these biases, therefore appeals to the corrective perspective.

My arguments for paying more attention to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in an organisation are solid. But these aren't beneficial just for a company - they can mean a lot to you, the reader, assuming you're an employee in a large organisation just like me.

Studies have shown that when teams are oriented to learn from each other's differences, members feel that the team supports learning. It boosts the larger vision of innovation, creativity, flexibility, and equity. An instance that comes to mind is when I was anxious about my safety in travelling to remote locations in a part of the country where I did not feel my safety was guaranteed. It took courage for me to say 'No' and postpone a travel plan because there was no one to travel with me. My then-manager, Diptanshu created a safe space for me to share my concerns, and then helped me realise how when women speak up, the organisation learns and adapts to make better processes for not just women, but everyone, including men.

Over the last two years in agri-business, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time travelling to remote locations in 8 states in different parts of the country. I’ve faced challenges ranging from finding reliable drivers, and safe hotels to stay, to finding washrooms on the long journeys across farmlands and returning to the nearest city before it is dark. The Women in Agri-business Summit helped me connect my thinking about these challenges to our structural journey to drive change. I’m aware that it is still a long journey that requires continuous effort from every stakeholder. But I’m glad we’re on the path.

Text by Swati Agarwal. Image from the Women in Agri-business Summit, March 2024, provided by GAVL.

Swati is a Manager in the Strategy team at GAVL. She holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Tiruchirappalli (IIM Trichy) and an M.A. in Applied Psychology from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai (TISS Mumbai).