Women Director : Corporate Governance and Gender Diversity in India, A Critical Analysis

The decision-making and governance at the highest level in any company vests with its Board of Directors. The concept of a Board of directors evolved because of the need for a group of trustworthy and respectable people to look after the interests of the shareholders who don’t involve directly in the decision-making power of the company. In the aftermath of various corporate frauds and scandals the need for better Corporate Governance for significant. The organization's top leadership needed to implement change, and there was also a need for female representation in the board of directors. Gender diversity is a subset of the broader concept of diversity. In the context of corporate boards, "gender diversity" refers to the inequality of women on the boards because men have historically predominated on corporate boards in practically all over the world.The need for having a strong framework of corporate governance in the functioning of the company insisted upon the requirement for having independent directors on the Board. The Companies Act, 2013 mandatorily requires at least one woman in the specified class of companies on the Board. Similarly, SEBI’s listing agreement also requires the listed companies to have a woman director on the Board. this study highlights the status of gender diversity on corporate boards, initiatives taken by the Government to improve gender diversity on their corporate boards, and also ascertains the barriers, and issues in gender diversity