NASSCOM announces awards for excellence

Kolkata, Dec 17: NASSCOM, the premier trade body of IT industry, today announced to institute awards for companies to recognise outstanding practices promoting gendern empowerment.

NASSCOM president Kiran Karnik said, ''The IT industry is one of the leading employment generating sectors with 1.3 million employed directly and over 3 million indirectly. While a majority of the IT industry players already follow world class HR practices, we also see certain examples of extraordinary practices that enable gender empowerment.'' A NASSCOM release said it is with the objective of propagating such practices that NASSCOM would constitute an annual award for companies.

''We are hopeful that this award will serve to showcase the Indian IT sector's focus in this area, in addition to encouraging companies to do more to attract women employees,'' Mr Karnik said.

NASSCOM conducted a study last year (June 2005) on women professionals in the IT industry. The findings of the study have revealed that most women in this sector are very self confident, determined and immensely talented professionals and have managed to make their mark within their organisations, owing both to their hard and soft skills.

As the IT-ITES sector moves forward, more and more women are joining the industry. Today's successful women leaders will act as catalysts, drawing even more talent into the workforce. In the IT industry, the men to women ratio was 76:24 in 2005, however, this ratio is likely to be 65:35 (men: women) by the year 2007.

While the percentage of women in the IT talent pool is steadily increasing, the majority of women are still at the bottom of the pyramid and there are comparatively few women in senior leadership positions in the industry.

UNI