Chapter

Merit and Gender Diversity: Lessons about Caste Diversity in Indian ITLessons about Caste Diversity in Indian IT

March 2018

March 2018

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780199479498.003.0005

In book: The New Frontier (pp.246-281)

Authors:

Despite gendered leakage in the engineering and general education pipelines, there is much progress in gender diversity or numerical parity in Indian IT. Gender parity in Indian IT has been achieved through gender neutral merit, even if privileged, and opportunities; Indian IT women professionals were as meritorious as men, equal to men on the streamlined pure merit metrics. But, significant hurdles exist in transforming the IT workspace into a gender inclusive one that makes room for family-work conflicts, systemic gendered glass ceiling and personal obstacles. The intersectionality of caste, family, and gender in dominant caste women’s access to IT networks through their strong family ties, has rendered gender inequality and equality more readily accessible and amenable for discussion, analyses, and redress than caste (in)equalities. The assessment of gender diversity progress in Indian IT offered a contrast point to the resistance to caste diversity.

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