An insight into the glass ceiling phenomenon at the board of director level in selected Indian companies Ganguly Anindya1, Rao Jasmine2, Dutta Sumanta3 1Student of Post Graduate and Research, Department of Commerce (Batch: 2016–2018), St. Xavier's College (Autonomous), Kolkata, 30, Mother Teresa Sarani, Kolkata-700016, India, He can be reached at: anindyaganguly.bhs@gmail.com 2Student of Post Graduate and Research, Department of Commerce (Batch: 2016–2018), St. Xavier's College (Autonomous), Kolkata, 30, Mother Teresa Sarani, Kolkata-700016, India, She can be reached at: jasminerao_95@yahoo.in 3Assistant Professor, Post Graduate and Research, Department of Commerce, St. Xavier's College (Autonomous), Kolkata, 30, Mother Teresa Sarani, Kolkata-700016, India, He can be reached at: sumantadu@gmail.com JEL Classification: J16, M10, M14 Online published on 27 May, 2021. Abstract India is a country revered for its mixed culture, diversity and values but when it comes to the actual workplace, we often find a not so diverse workplace, window dressed to fulfil the minimum requirements of law, depicting a lot less diverse pool of a patriarchal setup with only a few women participation in the actual workforce. This can be attributed to the deep-rooted, socially constructed, predefined gender roles. With the advent of Companies Act 2013, the implementation of gender quotas at the board level was implemented for all listed companies and certain other classes of companies. Even though the goals of Gender equity and Gender equality have been a prime focus of Gender activists throughout the last decade, the social stigma remains by large. Discriminatory practices are still practiced, even when it is prohibited by the constitution and punishable by law. Discrimination is practiced in many forms, however, the most common discrimination is the gender-based discrimination, is in the forms of recruitment, promotional opportunities and compensation. Thus, Glass ceiling can be defined as an artificial barrier to the career progressment of a certain group of individuals characterized by gender, race, ethnicity, religion, caste or sexual orientation. In this paper, we examine the effectiveness of Companies Act 2013 to shatter the glass ceiling at the directorial level by ensuring board-level diversity exists for the listed companies and certain other classes of companies. For this, a sample of Top 100 listed companies, based on the market capitalization, was taken before and after implementation of the Companies Act 2013 and a significant change was observed with respect to women representation at the board of director level in the selected companies. Top Keywords Glass ceiling, Diversity, Board of directors, Female directors, Risk and financial performance. Top |