Women’s Rights in India’s IT Sector: Does Equality Work Across Continents?

Abstract

The paper investigates the experiences of women IT professionals in India from two groups: the first group comprises women experiencing differences in work–life balance (WLB), inequalities and challenges of equal rights when they are working on different IT projects with a Swedish or US client. The second group of women comprising activists who have initiated to set up solidarity network groups on social media to ensure better WLB and equal rights. An interpretive research approach with 150 semi-structured interviews with IT professionals and an inductive analysis was adopted for this study. Findings highlight how equality, diversity and inclusion policies from the West are transformed in the Indian context, and how this has implications for women’s WLB and retention in transnational organizations in India. The importance of women’s activism in IT is highlighted as it contributes to creating solidarity networks providing unique bonding space and comfort for women IT professionals.