Today's corporate world is facing a challenge of managing its human capital which has become a critical and significant issue. The demand for talent is enormously growing across all sectors in the world. Today, women are competing at par with their male counterparts and organizations are also recognizing their talent and providing equal opportunities to them. Organizations are trying to hire the best talent, irrespective of the gender. Women have made their presence felt in every area. Moreover, they are front-runners for change and are emerging as leaders in their respective fields.

The contribution of women as leaders is essential in every sector for the success and prosperity of nations across the world. In spite of the various challenges faced by women across the globe, they continue to make incredible progress. However, the role of women in economic value creation has not been recognized and given as much attention as it deserves, whether it is providing moral support to male partners to pursue their careers, supplementing family income due to terrible necessities or pursuing corporate careers. In every scenario that leads to economic value creation, women have been playing a valuable role. Till recently, women were largely content with playing a supportive role in economic value creation. Over the last decade, there has been a change in the number of women who have entered into Indian corporate world. According to NASSCOM, the ratio of men and women in Information Technology (IT) and Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) sector could be 65:35 by the year 2010. The Watson Wyatt study says that the younger generation of women in India is expected to achieve educational parity with men by 2016. With everything being equal, increasingly corporate recruiters are enthusiastic to hire women graduates from B-Schools, recognizing the unique characteristics in women of having more empathy, perseverance and flexibility which are enablers for successful management practices. With more women entering the corporate world, there is a need to understand the identity of women, their aspirations and to put in place new management practices in order to keep pace with the change in gender ratio and the resulting work environment.

Traditionally, there was a misconception about a woman's ability to balance her work and personal life. There are women, who committed themselves to the success and growth of organizations. They include: Anne Mulcahy at Xerox, Carly Fiorina of Hewlett-Packard, Sara Mathew of Dun & Bradstreet Inc., Sulajja Firodia Motwani of Kinetic Engineering Ltd., Ranjana Kumar of NABARD, Vidya Chhabria of Jumbo Group, Naina Lal Kidwai at HSBC, Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo, Kiran Mazumdar Shah at Biocon, Lalita Gupte and Chanda Kochchar of ICICI. These are a few notable examples of women, who not only balanced their home life with their work, but also reached top positions in their respective organizations with their own styles of leadership. A woman's journey to such positions is not easy. Many research studies strongly support that women are born with the power of handling situations as they are tough warriors. Many experts strongly believe that women are associated with more participative and interactive management skills. With this they not only encourage their employees, but also make them feel more as part of one family. This, in turn, helps them to achieve their goals and objectives successfully.

HRM Review Magazine, Women Empowerment, Economic Value Creation, Corporate Careers, Information Technology, IT, Information Technology Enabled Services, ITES, Indian Economy, Corporate Sectors, Women Employment, Mmanufacturing Sectors, International Business Report, IBR.