Manuela with Angela Merkel
In passing the law,
Germany joined a trend in Europe to accomplish what has not happened
organically, or through general pressure: to legislate a much greater role for
women in boardrooms. “If there are no equal opportunities at the top of
companies, there are none in other areas either,” said Family Minister Manuela
Schwesig, according to the Associated Press. Despite having a female head of
government, Angela Merkel, none of Germany’s 30 most prominent companies are
run by women. Germany joins a slew of
other European countries that have set quotas for female corporate directors,
including Belgium, Norway, Spain, France and others, the New York Times reports.
Moving
away from the list, Forbes blog reports of ‘power women’ of different sort –
that is closer home. It’s a tribute to
an all-women combine in the village of Moperipalayam near the southern Indian
city of Coimbatore. Here, a group of 65
women manage the shop floor – assembling domestic water pumps at a plant run by
the $2.1 billion (revenues) Kirloskar Group of Pune. The women – in the age
group of 19 to 30 – produce nearly half a million pumps per year. The rejection
rate is less than one in 20,000 pieces. The interesting part is that each pump
is assembled in 17.25 seconds. The women complete a set of 24 operations in
that time. They are now working on reducing the assembly time to a mere 10
seconds per pump.
This feat won a
mention in the Limca Book of Records (the Indian equivalent of the Guinness
Book of World Records) in 2014. At that time they had reduced the assembly time
for a pump from 60 seconds to 20 seconds.
In 2011, Kirloskar set up this all-women plant as an experiment to see
how women would do on the shop floor. The employment of women in manufacturing
is very low and he wanted to see if he could do something in a small way. It
also came from a realization on the ground that in the case of domestic pumps
it is often the women who ended up facing the brunt when a home pump went down.
If a water motor failed in the house the woman would have to draw water from
the well or fetch water from a public tap. So there’s a huge vested interest in
having the motors running in the house.
So
the company trained a few local women. Slowly, it grew into this all-women
venture. The Kirloskar Group provides two months of industrial training to the
women – who are mostly school drop outs. I never knew this, before reading this
from Forbes, though it is happening in Tamil Nadu.
Make
It Happen is the 2015 theme for ‘ internationalwomensday.com ‘ global hub, encouraging effective action for advancing and
recognising women – and I thought of this post for the occasion !
With regards – S. Sampathkumar
7th Mar 2015.
