Breaking the glass ceiling: India’s corporate shift toward women CEOs

Once, India’s banking and financial services (BFSI) sector was the hallmark of women’s leadership, with trailblazers like Shikha Sharma (Axis Bank), Naina Lal Kidwai (HSBC), Zarin Daruwala (Standard Chartered), and Kalpana Morparia (JP Morgan) setting a visible example. Today, however, the center of gravity has shifted.

Consumer-facing industries and pharmaceuticals are now emerging as the new strongholds for women CEOs, reflecting where long-standing leadership pipelines are finally paying off.

A survey by global search firm Executive Access, commissioned by TOI, shows that the FMCG sector leads with women holding 19% of CEO positions, followed closely by pharma at 17%.

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“Women are often celebrated for strong intuitive decision-making—a crucial asset in today’s unpredictable business environment. Additionally, consumer buying decisions are heavily influenced by women. As organisations recognise this, sectors like FMCG and pharma could see women in leadership roles grow to 25% by 2030,” said Ronesh Puri, MD of Executive Access India to TOI.

Prominent women leaders include Priya Nair (Hindustan Unilever), Prabha Narasimhan (Colgate-Palmolive India), and Geetika Mehta (Nivea India) in consumer goods, and Shweta Rai (Bayer), Meenakshi Nevatia (Pfizer), and Annapurna Das (Takeda) in pharma.

Despite these gains, experts caution that structural and cultural barriers remain. “Sectors such as infrastructure, capital goods, and automobiles are still considered male-dominated. Companies must actively encourage women to enter these fields and support them through mentorship, leadership development, and policies. The low share of women in STEM further weakens the pipeline, while macro challenges like safety continue to be barriers,” said Namita Thapar, Executive Director at Emcure Pharmaceuticals to TOI.

This issue, often termed the “broken rung,” reflects a bottleneck at middle management. According to Achal Khanna, CEO of SHRM (APAC & MENA), a 2026 India Inc Leadership Report found nearly 30% of companies have seen stagnation or decline in women at senior levels over the past five years due to exits at mid-level positions. “Fixing this is critical for building a robust leadership pipeline,” he said to TOI.

Vedanta Resources CEO Deshnee Naidoo added, “Beyond mentorship, sustained sponsorship, cultural change, and policies supporting career continuity are what truly matter.”

The picture remains dynamic. Industries that actively cultivate gender-diverse talent over time are likely to stay ahead, while sectors such as manufacturing, technology, infrastructure, and logistics, where pipelines are thinner, lag behind. Multinationals continue to lead in women representation at the top, thanks to long-standing diversity agendas, while Indian firms are only beginning to catch up—a gap expected to narrow over the next five to ten years.

With TOI inputs