‘Digitisation to open up more opportunities for women’

The growing digitisation and mobility would open up more ways for women to participate in economic activity and help in gender diversity, ICICI Bank CEO Chanda Kochhar said.

“There are so many new e-commerce opportunities around very small cottage entrepreneurship, which can enable more and more women to participate,” she said on the sidelines of a CII HR summit on diversity and inclusion.

In her keynote speech, she said e-commerce was having a transformational impact with opportunities emerging in areas such as made-to-order meals and handicrafts among others, which women could capitalise on.

Ms. Kochhar cited various studies showing that women contribute to only 17 per cent of India’s GDP, below the global average, despite accounting for 50 per cent of the population and having the potential to represent a much larger part of the workforce.

A report by McKinsey Global Institute said that bridging the gender gap could add $700 billion to India’s GDP by 2025. The report titled ‘The Power of Parity: Advancing women’s equality in India’ said 70 per cent of the increase would come from raising India’s female labour-force participation rate to 41 per cent in 2025 from 31 per cent at present. This would bring 68 million more women into the economy over this period, it said.

“Women are such a large part of talent pool available in the country, that in order to use our talent pool fully we need to make sure women participate in economic activity. I also think a large part of India’s consumers are going to be women, so having women in decision making makes the decision much more comprehensive,” she said.

ICICI Bank