Indian banks remain male bastions despite gender inclusion policies by govt, RBI
The last two decades saw Indian women scaling new heights in almost every sphere of professional life including defence and space research. However, banking continued to remain the exclusive domain of men. Success of women in banking ends at manager level. Despite all the rhetoric about gender balance, top jobs in Indian banking sector remained elusive for women.
Things were promising a few years ago – largest bank in India, SBI, and the largest private sector bank, ICICI Bank, were headed by Arundhati Bhattacharya and Chanda Kochhar. Besides these two, the likes of Shikha Sharma (Axis Bank), Kalpana Morparia (JP Morgan), Ranjana Kumar (NABARD), Usha Thorat (RBI) and Usha Anathasubramanian (PNB) were dominating the banking space, prompting many to think that gender inclusion is here to stay and male domination was finally coming to an end.