A recent report by specialist staffing company Xpheno reveals that five large Indian IT service companies have witnessed a net exit of over 21,300 women employees in the last one-year period ending June 2024. According to the compiled data, the quarter ending June 2024 saw four out of five companies reporting their lowest women-employee ratios over six quarters starting January 2023.

In the four quarters preceding June, Wipro saw the exit of 15,367 employees, of which 5,125 were women. Infosys’ headcount decreased by 20,962, with 9,226 being female employees. Of the 4,037 employees who left HCLTechnologies, 1,829 were women. TCS and LTIMindtree saw a headcount dip of 8,320 and 804 respectively, with 4,800 and 329 female employees leaving. In total, of the 49,490 employees who left the companies, 21,309, over 43 per cent were women.

“The overall diversity ratios have not significantly increased despite the growth in absolute volume of women intake. This indicates a relative hiring increase of male professionals. Such parallel growth in intake scale will continue to drive constant and flat gender ratios as we are witnessing. The popular diversity model seems to be for enterprises to adhere to the common reservation thumb rule of one-third of the whole. While few enterprises have moved the needle by few percentages, most stay committed to the 35 per cent average spot,” said Shincy Morris, Business Head, Direct Hiring, adding that enterprises should aspire for a higher diversity ratio closer to or beyond the 40 per cent mark.

The diversity ratio among the mentioned companies grew by 0.9 per cent between 2020 (33.36 per cent) and 2024 (34.12 per cent) despite the net growth of 1.38 lakh women professionals, said Xpheno. However, in the pre-pandemic years, between 2018 (31.80 per cent) and 2020 (33.36 per cent), there was a 1.56 per cent growth in diversity ratios.

According to the data, the total number of women employed by this cohort grew from an estimated 3.74 lakh in March 2020, to 5.40 lakh in March 2023. However, it is currently down to 5.12 lakh.

According to Xpheno, the increase and decrease in women professionals in the IT services workforce is due to an overall increase or drop in hiring volume across genders. Diversity movements have not been due to a focused growth or retention of women professionals. This drop is linked to the overall decline in headcounts this cohort has experienced – 73,604 over the six quarters since January 2023.

The data collected also observed that in contrast to Indian players, the diversity at global IT service giants is significantly higher – Accenture at 48 per cent, Capgemini at 38.8 per cent, Cognizant at 40 per cent, and Genpact at 42 per cent.  

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