Times changing for India's women executives

By Charlotte Cooper

MUMBAI (Reuters) - When Manisha Girotra started her career in investment banking in India 17 or so years ago, the businessmen she met wouldn't shake her hand.

Traditionally, etiquette meant Indian men would greet a woman with words rather than offering their hand.

"They would all say 'Namaste' to me and look like 'What are we supposed to do with this one who has walked in?'," she laughs.

Now managing director and chairperson for Swiss bank UBS (UBSN.VX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) in India, Girotra is by no means alone at the top of India's banking tree.

Private sector ICICI Bank (ICBK.BO: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) has a woman joint managing director and chief financial officer, Chanda Kochhar, HSBC's (HSBA.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) country head is Naina Lal Kidwai, and Vedika Bhandarkar runs investment banking for JP Morgan (JPM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

Morgan Stanley (MS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) also recently appointed a new - female - India investment banking head.

HSBC's Kidwai says about 40 percent of her upper-middle management are women.

"This isn't about numbers, it's about real quality high-ranking individuals driving business," she told Reuters India Investment Summit this week.

"The role model effect of that is fantastic because it will willy-nilly pull people along the line."

Kidwai, Girotra and Kochhar say they don't juggle office, children and home on their own.

Each credits India's enduring family support system, where mothers and sisters step in as back-up, and its pool of affordable domestic help as a key ingredient in oiling the wheels of their professional life and giving them one aide their counterparts in developed countries often have to do without.

"When I compare it with my friends from business school ... and the madness of running your kids, home, work, trying to make it to the day-care centre before it shuts to get your kid out - I think I would have died 3,000 times," Kidwai said.

"Some of them have managed, many of them have dropped away by the time the second child came. I think we in India have less excuses."

GENDER NEUTRAL

India can be a country of contradictions. Its adult female literacy rate was 47.8 percent in 2004 compared with adult male literacy of 73.4 percent, and a traditional cultural preference for sons has fed into female infanticide.  Continued...