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The IIM
Lady
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Meet Neelu Rohmetra, the
first woman at the helm of an Indian Institute of Management
When the appointments
committee of the Union cabinet announced in February new directors for the Indi
an Institutes of Management (IIMs), the one that stood out was Dr Neelu
Rohmetra, 51, who was to head IIM Sirmaur in Himachal Pradesh. After all,
Rohmetra is the first woman at the helm of an IIM.
It was during the tenure of
Smriti Irani as minister of human resource development -Irani was HRD minis ter
till July last year -that the first move to correct the gender imbalance in top
jobs in government-controlled management and engineer ing schools was made.
Irani has, in fact, been credited for bringing in more women to helm the board
rooms of the top Indian institutes, many for the first time.
Women tech executives were
for the first time appointed chairpersons of the board of governors of five
National Institutes of Technology (NITs): Kumud Srinivasan, then-president of
Intel India, at NIT-Trichy; Vanitha Narayanan, MD of IBM, at NIT-Suratkal;
Aruna Jayanthi, then-CEO of Capgemini India, as chairperson of NIT-Calicut;
Vasantha Ramaswamy, direc tor of Aprameya Associates, at NIT-Rourkela; and Jaya
Panvalkar, formerly head of NVIDIA's Pune design centre, as chairperson of
NIT-Surat.
Need for Corrective Measures
The trend continued with
philanthropist and industrialist Lila Poonawalla helming the board of governors
of IIT-Ropar, IIIT-Vadodara chaired by ICICI's Chanda Kochhar, and IIIT-Dharwad
by Infosys Foundation's Sudha Murty. Biocon's Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is holding
fort as chairperson of the board of governors of IIM-Bangalore.
While there have been some
women vice-chancellors at Central universities, technical institutes have not
had as many women steering them. NIT-Trichy has one of them now in Mini Thomas
and now IIM-S joins this special club.
So why did it take such a
long time for the IIMs to break the glass ceiling? Rohmetra is best placed to
an swer that question. “The selection process is fair and merit-oriented.When
looking for a person to helm an IIM, role models are important and merit has to
be recognised,“ says Rohmetra, who brings to the table a combination of
administrative acumen and academic scholarship spanning a 28-year career in
management education.
At the faculty level, too,
more women are making their presence felt. At IIM-Bangalore, for instance, 25%
of the faculty are women, and at IIM-Indore, the figure is almost 15%.But
that's as good as it gets.
Deepa Mani, executive
director at the Srini Raju Centre for IT and the Networked Economy (SRITNE ) at
the Indian School of Business (ISB) in Hyderabad, reckons that the need for a
diverse faculty gets less attention in many Indian institutions than it does in
schools in the West. There are well-documented biases that exist against women
faculty members. Studies have shown that students (both male and female) treat
women faculty with more scepticism and have more exacting standards, points out
Mani. Corrective measures, she feels, should be taken by top B-schools by
constantly measuring these behaviours in their school and responding to them
with training and adequate support for the women faculty.
Gender Balance
On a broader canvas,
Rohmetra says, the reason why there are very few women in top roles in
management education boils down to per sonal choices and inhibitions and tough
competition. “In India, the family environment and the cultural ethos are often
challenging for women. And this starts with the girl child and an inhibiting
environment for girls in going for higher education.“
This leads to girls and
women opting for conventional career choices in a comfort zone rather than
exploring new and unconventional careers.
Rohmetra also blames corpo
rates for preferring boys to girls, sometimes even when girls out perform boys
in academic and professional excellence. “They prefer men over women,
especially for field jobs,“ she says. But things are getting better, according
to her, and she dreams of soon seeing management classes with boys and girls as
a balanced ratio with better gender diversity (the current ratio would be
roughly 80:20).
Rajendra Srivastava, dean
of ISB, echoes Rohmetra's view on personal and societal commitments. “If we
want to bring about a real gender balance in higher roles, especially in
academia, we must encourage more talented women to choose academic careers,
create equal opportunities for growth and, above all, have a robust support
system to help manage their professional and family responsibilities.“
As IIM-S director, Rohmetra
is formulating policies to reward girl students who excel. “While I am told I'm
the first woman director governing an IIM, there have been many women before me
at different IIMs who have held top posts. They have all done very well and I
find them inspiring.“
Rohmetra has had a long
stint -28 years -at Jammu University, and not just as a professor. She founded
the International Centre for CrossCultural Research & Human Resource
Management at the university. Among the other top roles that she held are
rector at the Kathua and Billawar campuses of Jammu University and director of
the university's business school.
“Some of the challenges in
my career included introduction of new programmes. And as rector of the Khatua
campus, I was involved in different aspects -from acquiring land to various
administrative and construction issues,“ says Rohmetra.“Everything that I
learnt at Jammu University, I will bring to Sirmaur.“
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Ishani
Duttagupta & Anubhuti Vishnoi
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ET16APR17
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