Keeping in sync with this year’s Women’s Day theme – Women in Leadership : achieving an equal future in a Covid-19 world, Xaviers Institute of Management, is setting up a centre for Gender Equality and Inclusive Leadership at its Delhi-NCR campus. The move comes as part of a concerted effort being made by the institute of making a meaningful impact on the inclusion of women in economically gainful activities.

XLRI will be formally inaugurating the Centre for Gender Equality and Inclusive Leadership to promote women's participation in economic activities and help bring more balance in the society, tomorrow during its International Women’s Day celebration.

Notably, XLRI as an institution has been a pioneer in taking up various issues like ethics, sustainability, and social entrepreneurship.

“The centre will bring together a large group of professionally well-established alumni and industry practitioners who will collaborate with XLRI to design and deploy a wide range of interventions to transform the daily lives of Indian women,” said a statement issued by the B-school.

The centre will be housed at the newly opened Delhi-NCR campus, which was born out of XLRI’s desire to strengthen the industry-academia interface further.

The NCR region is a hub of manufacturing and a centre of the knowledge economy and will help facilitate the new centre’s functioning.

The Delhi-NCR campus is nestled in a serene, 37-acre green campus close to Jhajjar, a 45-minute drive from Gurgaon, and has world-class infrastructure.

The new centre will be led by Professor Shreyashi Chakraborty, an assistant professor in the area of organizational behaviour at XLRI.

Her primary research interests are inequalities, diversity management practices in Indian workplaces, and career experiences of women employees. She had also won the Emerald Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award in the area of HRM in 2017.

Prof. Shreyashi Chakraborty, a professor of organizational behaviour said, “In September 2020 the World Economic Forum published their 14th Gender Parity Report. The research report was alarming - India ranked very low at 112th position. The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has further intensified the gender-related challenges. There is a severe need for promoting women to participate in economic activities for the betterment of women's economic empowerment.”

Prof Chakraborty further stressed that the B-school was committed to the cause of the inclusion of women in all spheres of life.

Director of XLRI, Fr. P Christie commented “Our ambitious goal is to significantly increase the participation of women in the workforce within the next 5-10 years through strategic and broad-based interventions. As a first step, we are setting up the Centre for Gender Equality and Inclusive Leadership.”

He further added, “The alumni of our institute have done exemplary work in bringing this initiative to fruition and establishing the Centre. We need all the help and support to build the impetus on this issue which is important for our world to develop meaningfully.”