New Delhi, July 1 -- Women hold 21% of board seats in India's listed companies. Yet in 97% of those companies, the number stops at a single woman director, according to a 2024 Deloitte report, Women in the Boardroom. Progress on paper, perhaps, but rarely a meaningful shift in decision-making power. The real question isn't whether women are ready to lead. It's whether our systems are prepared to rethink what leadership should mean.

Leadership pipelines don't fracture at the top; they thin out in the middle. At the entry level, women make up 34% of India's workforce. By mid-management, that figure drops to 19%. And at the C-suite? A mere 17% (DivHersity Benchmarking Report 2023-2024). The issue isn't a scarcity of talent, but systems desi...