As the International Women’s Day passes us by, India is improving slow but steady. The recent reports show us a ray of hope. In the muck of countless difficulties, lotuses are formed. In the face of ever-growing crime against women and several other forms of discrimination, some are there who are ready to win all battles. At least this year we see that the number of fighters is increasing.

The ranking of India has improved with the percentage coming to 20 per recent in 2018. The report shows that there has been a continuous growth, it was 17 per recent last year and 14 per recent in 2014.

Information for the report is taken from 4,995 interviews, which were conducted between July to December with chief executive officers, managing directors, chairs, and other senior decision-makers from all industry sectors in mid-market businesses. As many as 35 countries were taken into account.

Kavita Mathur, People & Culture Leader of Grant Thorton Advisory Private Limited said"While the representation of women in top leadership roles is on the rise, the process is indeed slow, limited to the dated approach of ticking the diversity box,"

The data which was compiled is promising in various areas, it says gender equality policies are in abundance in India. 64 per recent of the companies have equal pay for both men and women performing the same kind of tasks and 55 percent companies practice anti-discriminatory policies during recruitment.

Unfortunately, there are areas where India needs to work on, the same data revealed 30 per cent respondents said that women in leadership roles are not present in their place. 57 percent business said that they expect the government to work more than that of gender equality at the legislative level. Only 31 percent suggested that government and businesses should work together on increasing the number of women taking up leadership roles.

Yes! We have come up a long way but a lot of roads still needs to be covered.