Women, especially in India, often face massive roadblocks while pursuing their professional careers. The barriers are much more evident when women look at having long successful careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-related fields. Although research shows that 43% of STEM graduates in India are women, there are only 14% women when it comes to STEM jobs. In male-dominated workplaces, women either leave a STEM career midway, switch to other fields, or drop out of the workforce altogether. Studies also find that 42% of women leave technology companies after 10 years of experience compared to only 17% of men.

A career over three decades is rare for an Indian woman in STEM, but Charu Srinivasan, the site leader for the growing Cloud + AI organization at Microsoft India Development Center (IDC) and the VP of Engineering leader in Azure Core leading Compute and Cloud-Native technologies, has achieved just that, with her grit and determination. 

In her 30 years plus career at Microsoft in the US and India, Srinivasan is known for her engineering excellence, innovation, and strong leadership over multiple roles at the organization. She has innovated in different areas of the Microsoft Cloud and is currently focused on understanding technology to build privacy-preserving computational approaches.  

Over the years, Srinivasan has also led multiple initiatives across IDC that focused on building innovation excellence, empowering women leaders, and mentoring senior engineering talent. She was the founding member for Microsoft WISE Mentoring Program where tech leaders at Microsoft volunteer to mentor women in computer science and software engineering. She partnered with CII’s Centre of Excellence on their vision for Digital Transformation and is the board member of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) National Committee on Technology.

Women like Srinivasan are what many girls around the world aspire to be, but most of the time, they fail to make it due to artificially created societal barriers.

Srinivasan believes that her career has been shaped through the inclusive culture at Microsoft that has helped her make her own choices and bring her authentic self to work. An environment that encourages a growth mindset has given her opportunities to take risks, experiment with new ideas, and learn along the way, Srinivasan says.

During an interaction with People Matters, Srinivasan shares her ideas for creating a culture of inclusion and equality within a workplace and her observations on how a smooth path can be ensured for women who wish to pursue STEM as a career option.

Here are a few excerpts:

Prioritising a culture of inclusion and equality at the workplace

First and foremost, our priority is to ensure that our teams demonstrate an inclusive culture so everyone can bring their best to work every day. We want all our employees to practice awareness, exercise curiosity, and demonstrate courage.

Secondly, we strive to be intentional and inclusive in our approach to attracting, retaining, and growing our talent.

Finally, we focus on being inclusive in the way we design and build our products to meet the needs of our customers.

Role of technology in accelerating diversity and inclusion

Technology plays a crucial role in accelerating diversity and inclusion (D&I) – we need to make our products work for everyone. Everyone has abilities and limits to those abilities. Designing for people with permanent disabilities results in designs that benefit people universally.

At Microsoft, inclusive design puts people in the center from the very start of the process, and those fresh, diverse perspectives are the key to true insight. Technology should ensure that inherent biases do not come into building the product.

For example, Microsoft is creating AI applications and services to assist individuals and organizations every day with an unyielding focus on design that puts people at the center - we want to ensure our advancements serve what is good for people. We believe in the shared responsibility of raising awareness and understanding through open dialogue and we invite everyone to have a voice in shaping the future.

Making diversity and inclusion sustainable

D&I becomes sustainable when it is deeply ingrained in the organizational culture, and it is also one of the biggest challenges. We, as leaders, need to bring a learner mindset, be willing to make changes as needed, and be role models of our culture.

Leaders need to create a psychologically safe environment for people to speak up about their lived experiences. At Microsoft, we believe that organizational processes and practices are also crucial to support all our employees to demonstrate the espoused organizational culture.

Role of men in enabling and accelerating gender equity

Not just men, all of us need to think deeply about who is at the table and more importantly, who is not.

We need to deeply interrogate the systemic privileges of majority groups and how that impacts our hiring processes. We should be willing to think through inclusive hiring approaches so we can attract diverse talent and also think about privileges in the context of growing our talent. Often the talent pipeline is not available, so we must be willing to commit resources and mindshare to grow the pipeline.

In other words, we must be willing to dismantle structural privilege that makes it hard for underrepresented minorities to participate equitably in the workforce.

Need to weave allyship support in the flow of work rather than occasional conversations

Allyship needs to be ingrained in our everyday experiences – as an example, how we behave in meetings, how we ensure all voices are heard, how we amplify the voices of people who are likely not being heard.

It starts with being present to how people may be feeling in these everyday interactions – do they feel valued, or do they feel minimized? Focusing on this allows us to create an environment where everyone can bring in their authentic selves and do their best work, not just a limited few.

Clearing roadblocks for women who wish to pursue STEM as a career option

Women pursuing STEM careers face roadblocks around societal expectations, especially around childcare and eldercare. These expectations are more pronounced as they navigate marriage, maternity, and motherhood. It is crucial that we unconditionally support our mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, friends, and colleagues at work as they navigate these changes.

It is also important to have inspirational role models that have broken the mould – as an example, we launched the Microsoft WISE Mentoring Program that was launched years ago in IDC Hyderabad. Its vision was to inspire and empower women in software and engineering to pursue rewarding careers in technology. Through this program, we bring together a group of Microsoft mentors to inspire these students. It seemed like a splendid opportunity for making a long-lasting impact on their careers. The participants went through a rigorous but exciting journey of the corporate world while they were still in their 3rd year. The result – institutes called us asking "What exactly did you do that the girls became so confident and eager to own their decisions, their careers, their lives?”