KOCHI : The emphasis Kerala places on education — especially of the girl child — and women’s empowerment now seems to be coalescing to pay rich dividends. As per statistics, IT parks in the state have a healthier number of female employees compared to the national average.
The Women in Tech 2023 study, published by AIM Research, says female employees account for around 29% of India’s total pool of tech employees, making up 1.3 million of the total 4.6 million personnel.
However, IT parks in Kerala have a better ratio, with women making up 45% of the workforce of Thiruvananthapuram Technopark and 40% each in Kochi Infopark and Kozhikode Cyberpark. The total employee strength in IT parks in the state is 1.5 lakh.
This trend was recently highlighted by Ravi Kumar, CEO of Cognizant, who said tier 2 and 3 cities such as Coimbatore and Kochi have way more women in the tech sector compared with the national average.
But what does Kerala have that encourages more women to enter the workforce?
According to Alexander Varghese, chief operating officer with UST, the state has always had women at the forefront when it comes to higher education and academic performance. “The engineering stream has been witnessing an increase in women students and the technology arena in Kerala has been benefiting from this change,” he says.
“Recruiters in Kerala get to review applications of women graduates who aspire to further their career in the technology domain. Most of the women employees in technology firms have also placed their careers first while staying back in the verdant settings of the state, where they can have a better work-life balance,” Varghese said.
According to Susanth Kurunthil, CEO of Infopark, the numbers are a reflection of the social fabric of the state. “Here girl-child education has been always given utmost importance. There is no discrimination. The emphasis has always been on equal opportunity for all.” In fact, the new IT policy has promised rent incentives to companies that have more than 50%women employees, he indicated.
The opinion was echoed by Sreekumar V, executive committee member of Group of Technology Companies (GTech), a collaborative of IT and ITeS firms in Kerala. “Girls have a lot of opportunities in Kerala. We have been emphasising girl-child education way before the other states took up the initiative,” he added.
“A lot of facilities have been made available for women employees in IT parks, including creches. So, they feel comfortable working without having to worry about their children,” Kurunthil stressed.
Talking about Infopark, Varghese said, “We have made the campus and working environment best suited for female employees. Considering the needs of women employees, we have put in place a policy to make their lives better on our campuses by providing feeding rooms, daycare for kids, and facilities for expecting mothers. We also run an accelerated leadership programme named WinIT for women associates working towards achieving leadership positions.”
Study report
IT parks in Kerala have a better ratio, with women making up 45% of the workforce of Technopark and 40% each in Infopark and Kozhikode Cyberpark
Female employees account for around 29% of India’s total pool of tech employees