While the Nari Shakti Vandan Act, 2023 promised to reshape India’s political landscape by reserving one-third of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies, government companies have remained a boys’ club.
A Parliamentary panel has exposed the sector’s dismal track record on gender diversity, revealing that women occupy a mere 7 per cent of board-level roles—a figure that makes the Nari Shakti policy sound hollow.
In its 145th report tabled in Parliament on March 27, the Department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on personnel, public grievances, law and justice slammed the central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) for keeping women out of the top brass.
Even among the eligible managerial pool, women account for just 7 per cent, making it clear that the glass ceiling in public sector leadership is bulletproof.
A recent analysis by Primeinfobase, which provides data on the capital market, has laid bare the sector’s dismal gender diversity, exposing how public sector undertakings (PSUs) are locking women out of leadership.
The study, published in March, revealed that nearly half of the 57 listed companies without a woman director are PSUs.
And female representation on PSU boards is coming down. In FY18, 67 of the 71 listed PSUs had at least one woman director, marking a participation rate of 94.4 per cent. Fast forward to March 2025, and the number has plummeted to 67.1 per cent, with only 53 out of 79 listed PSUs having a female board member.
As on 28 February 2025, of the total of 389 Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs) and subsidiaries of CPSEs, only 70 are listed.
The Parliamentary committee has now demanded immediate intervention from the department of personnel and training (DoPT), urging it to take “concrete measures” to break the gender lockout, in line with the government's 'Nari Shakti' policy.
The Nari Shakti Vandan Act, which was passed with near-unanimous support in September 2023.
The Act reserves one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies for women—something that took India nearly three decades of political wrangling to achieve.
But the data showed women MPs account for nearly 15 per cent of the Lok Sabha strength whereas their representation was below 10 per cent in many state assemblies.