Token seats, missing voices: What a new report reveals about India’s corporate gender gap

For more than a decade, Indian companies have showcased their lone woman director as a badge of compliance, the corporate equivalent of checking a box and calling it progress. But behind the polished annual reports and celebratory statements lies a quieter, more uncomfortable truth: women have finally entered the boardroom, yet the boardroom has not opened its doors to them. A new report by Khaitan & Co., Aon, and Ladies Who Lead - Presence to Influence: Advancing Women in Indian Boardrooms , forces India Inc. to confront this reality. It reveals that while 98% of BSE-200 companies now have at least one woman director, mandated by the Companies Act 2013, the mandate has birthed visibility, not voice. Representation has risen, but relevance has not. This is the heart of India’s corpor