Women join startups for similar reasons as men, such as accelerated learning and advancement, ownership and innovation. Yet women’s path to seniority in startups remains riddled with challenges. While reasons such as care responsibilities and the lack of professional networks play a significant role, in an ecosystem that prizes hustle and high ownership, there are often deep-seated unconscious gender biases that play a role in the steep drop off of women’s careers.

Startups have a pivotal opportunity to build on their early successes in gender inclusion to create new benchmarks for workplace diversity that hold lessons for corporate India by creating clear pathways for women to advance into business-critical senior roles.

Having women in leadership positions doesn’t simply fulfil diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) goals, but also brings tangible business benefits to organisations. Research shows that more women in senior positions can enhance profitability for companies and provide higher-quality customer experiences, in addition to increased employee engagement in the workplace. Gender-diverse senior leadership sharpens innovation by leveraging different perspectives and areas of expertise, helping make products and services more human-centric.

Tied to improved business outcomes is the fact that women in top leadership positions can foster a more inclusive and collaborative workplace environment for all employees. This helps attract a broader talent pool and create more positive workspaces for employees. Interestingly, WISER found startups with women founders to have 2.5x women in senior roles compared to those with only male founders. While it’s an insightful piece of data, it’s not a surprising one. Women leaders are more acutely aware of gender barriers in startups and can create the space for even more women to advance in their careers, causing a ripple effect towards gender parity.

Startups need to implement tailored solutions that are aimed towards the visible as well as invisible challenges faced by women. There are no big, sweeping changes that can transform outcomes in this regard but an alignment between purpose, policy and practice is a promising place to start. The idea should be to focus on a few, high impact, high leverage goals, such as improving gender diversity in business-critical functions where women are underrepresented s like technology, product, finance and sales, or increasing the number of women in senior leadership.

In fact, a top-down approach to gender diversity is proven to be effective, as startup founders and leadership teams play a key role in defining the organisation’s culture, enabling lasting shifts and prioritising inclusive growth. They can set an example that overcomes the status quo, where women are over mentored and under sponsored, by protecting female employees' share of voice, valuing their talent and championing their growth.

This needs to be complemented with policy changes at an organisational level, putting gender equality goals at the heart of company scorecards. Managers have a crucial role to play in putting this to practice and guiding women team members growth by providing both guidance and access to advancement opportunities, while taking the time to examine unconscious biases. Additionally, leadership development programmes can ensure that such efforts are aligned and streamlined. Industry- and role-specific leadership development programmes have massive potential to address particular gaps in women’s professional development. Such programs, when rooted in practical commitment from startups, can create transparent trajectories for experienced women to advance to senior roles. These help equip women with increased confidence, stronger networks, and improved business and behavioural skills towards an assured end.

As India’s startups spearhead innovation for the nation, this is a significant opportunity for this ecosystem to define the new standard in workforce development. To increase gender equity, startups simply need to commit to what they do best: Disrupt the traditional and unlock the future.

This article is authored by Sowjanya Kanuri, director, ACT for Women.