XLRI sets up centre for Gender Equality, Inclusive Leadership at Delhi-NCR campus

New Delhi, Mar 08: In a recent development, Xavier School of Management, in its endeavour to Powering Women of the Nation is setting up the Centre for Gender Equality and Inclusive Leadership at Delhi-NCR Campus to make a meaningful impact on the inclusion of women in economically gainful activities.

In line with this year's theme of women's day 'Women in Leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world', XLRI celebrates International Women's Day by setting up a Centre for Gender Equality and Inclusive Leadership to promote women's participation in economic activities and help bring more balance in the society.

It can be seen that XLRI as an institution has always been a pioneer in taking up various issues like Ethics, Sustainability and Social Entrepreneurship much before they became fashionable.

The centre brings together a large group of professionally well-established alumni and industry practitioners who will collaborate with XLRI to design and deploy a wide range of interventions to transform the daily lives of Indian women.

The centre will be housed at the newly opened Delhi-NCR campus, which was borne out of XLRI's desire to further strengthen the Industry-academia interface further. The NCR region is a hub of manufacturing and a centre of the knowledge economy and will help facilitate the new centre's functioning.

The Delhi-NCR campus is nestled in a serene, 37 acre green campus close to Jhajjar, a 45-minute drive from Gurgaon, and has world-class infrastructure.

The new centre will be led by Prof. Shreyashi Chakraborty, an Assistant Professor in the area of Organizational Behaviour at XLRI.

Her primary research interests are inequalities, diversity management practices in Indian workplaces and career experiences of women employees. She had also won the Emerald Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award in the area of HRM in 2017.

"In September 2020 the World Economic Forum published their 14th Gender Parity Report. The research report was alarming - India ranks very low. The Top-5 countries have closed 80 per cent of the gender gap - Iceland leads at 82 per cent," Shreyashi Chakraborty said.

"India is at 112th position - a 4 spot decline, behind several LATAM, Caribbean, middle-eastern, and north-African nations. Globally, the economic participation and opportunity gap expanded in 2020 - a worrying sign that women are persistently less present in labour-markets than men. WEF report calls out that economic opportunities for women are extremely limited in India (149th rank) at just 35.4%, followed only by Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq," Shreyashi Chakraborty added.

"We at XLRI are committed to the cause of inclusion of women in all spheres of life. Our work towards making our nation a more equitable society will be intensified through This Centre for Gender Equality and Inclusive Leadership with the valuable participation of our esteemed alumni," Prof Chakraborty further added.

"Our ambitious goal is to significantly increase the participation of women in the workforce within the next 5-10 years through strategic and broad-based interventions. As a first step, we are setting up the Centre for Gender Equality and Inclusive Leadership," Fr P Christie SJ, Director, XLRI - Xavier School of Management said.

"Interestingly, Jesuits as an order decided to focus on women empowerment in 1995 (more than 25 years ago). They committed to the inclusion of women via a formal decree signed in that year," Fr P Christie added.

"The alumni of our institute have done exemplary work in bringing this initiative to fruition and establishing the Centre. We need all the help and support to build the impetus on this issue which is important for our world to develop meaningfully," he further added.

XLRI-Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur is a premier, private management institute in India founded in 1949 by Fr Quinn Enright, SJ in the 'steel city' of Jamshedpur (www.xlri.ac.in).

Over the last seven decades, the institute has grown into a top-ranking business management school of international repute with a wide portfolio of management programs and research publications.

Its alumnae are spread around the globe and have demonstrated responsible business leadership in their organizations. XLRI continually strives to contribute its mite to the professional growth and management of numerous organizations and institutions across industry sectors.

XLRI has been awarded two prestigious International Accreditations, viz., AACSB - The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business and AMBA - Association of MBAs. XLRI has also earned the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) accreditation.