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Women face a myriad of societal, systemic, and structural challenges in their career journeys - gender gap, unconscious biases, stereotypes, and pay disparity. The pandemic exacerbated some of the obstacles by blurring the work-life boundaries and offered a silver lining in flexibility and hybrid work models. Especially at senior levels, women find themselves in a lonely place fighting a lonely battle even now, say experts.
Are women-only networks the answer to this underlying issue, or are barriers to women's careers so profoundly entrenched that women-only professional networks may find it difficult to move the needle?
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Says Kalpana Morparia, former chairperson of JPMorgan South and Southeast Asia, "We are seeing more women entering the workforce and rising to senior positions - especially in sectors such as services - and we are seeing the emergence of women's networks too. More women in senior roles act as a magnet for other women - they act as role models. Many organizations also have women-focused resource groups that create bonding opportunities for women."
Anuranjita Kumar founded We-Ace, a community and partner-led ecosystem that supports the skilling, mentoring and work opportunities for women, amid the pandemic in September 2020, and raised $1.1 million in seed funding. Next, she rolled out a women's CXO club as "you need a little bit of sisterhood at the CXO level," Kumar says.
The community-led professional network for women Leap.club that started in May 2020 has now grown to 4500+ paying members, says co-founder Anand Sinha.
"We are building a tech-first social, professional network that bridges the existing gender gap in the professional setting. We're building in India for the world to encourage women to invest in their professional growth and provide them with the tools to make it happen," adds Sinha. Leap.club has raised funding from Enzia Ventures, Whiteboard Capital, and Titan Capital, among others.
Such networks are upbeat, but can they catch up with the old boys' club culture?
"Through my corporate life and entrepreneurship journey, the dynamics of old boys' club remain strong; having been cemented over decades, and the top of the line business deals continue to be closed through handshakes at the club and that in my opinion, may not change. Being invited there, though, would take a while and therefore, it is important for women to support each other as they take the mantle of leadership," Kumar adds.
Manisha Sharma-Kohli, head of partner engineering (India and SEA), Google Cloud, who is part of the network, says, "It gives me access to women leaders like myself, senior to me and even younger ones aspiring to be there, beyond my organisation. It's an interesting group of CXOs from across a diverse set of industries."
Sharma-Kohli, who has more than 20 years of work experience across organisations feels strongly about the need for greater representation of women from the director and above levels in all organisations.
"The role of women leaders mentoring other aspiring women is important and the networking clubs act as a catalyst for that. I look at these networks as places where women can relate to each other and support one another in a meaningful and relevant way. We need that camaraderie to support each other," she said.
The camaraderie Sharma-Kohli talks about has been one of the biggest barriers for women in making their way through the male-dominated world of work, leadership and entrepreneurship. The culture of old boys' networks has been in existence for decades. These networks are close cohorts of homogenous men with access to capital and resources starting in education, employment and entrepreneurship. They keep access to information, opportunity and capital within the networks.
This makes career navigation a tough task for women, but there are decisive changes.
"The dynamics of the old boys' club are challenged by technology. Founders now have more ways of raining the funds as there is more transparency. The change is slow, and whoever controls the capital controls the narrative," says Sairee Chahal, founder of women-only communities Sheroes and Mahila Money.
Plus, the younger generation naturally bears a more favourable career outlook. Of the 150,000 women on the We-ACE platform, 70% want to have conversations in the network to validate their thoughts and receive feedback, support, and guidance.
A host of companies like IBM, SAP Labs India, Accenture, P&G, and Genpact focus on their internal women networks to build up women employees' careers.
At IBM, the Business Resource Group (BRG) is a company-recognised and sponsored group of volunteers working towards specific diversity and inclusion goals. Consumer goods company P&G has set up the Women's Interactive Network (iWIN) for the advancement of women, helping ensure that women's skills and insights are well represented at all levels of leadership. Other companies like SAP, Genpact and Accenture run similar networks.
Experts like Chandrasekhar Sripada, professor of Practice, organisational behaviour, Indian School of Business, acknowledge that women face more roadblocks in career development but says not all are due to old boys' networks.
"The overall socio-cultural context pushing women to often prioritise family and caregiving over career is the larger reason why men get undue advantage and overtake women in career growth," says Sripada, adding, "Old boys' clubs will continue. But we must build new women's clubs and enrol men as allies."
(Additional inputs from Rica Bhattacharyya)
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