India’s banking sector has witnessed explosive growth and expansion ever since the era of economic reforms was launched nearly two decades ago. That growth has also created new windows of opportunity for women to find employment in the banking sector.
In fact, the nationalization of the indian banking sector in 1969 served as the first major step to reduce gender discrimination against women in banking jobs. However, the general pattern of women’s employment in this sector has shown that there has been a sort of persistent invisible glass ceiling against women acquiring the top management positions in banking.
With the opening up of banking to the private sector in india, there is a new hope that more employment transparency and purely merit-based job opportunities will get a boost in this sector. This change is already becoming visible in the large foreign banks in India. A source from Citibank points out that in 1970, women comprised only 5% of the bank’s total workforce. But by the 1990’s, women occupied a majority of clerical and computer programming jobs at Citibank. The officials at Banque Nationale de paris in india also corroborate this trend.
