Top 10 Women CFOs - 2021

With the evolution of advanced technologies such as bigdata and AI, the role of CFOs has undergone a paradigm shift over the last few decades. They have gone a long way from the historical tasks of the finance function such as books and records, financial reporting, and statutory compliance. The CFO's duties include tracking cash flow and financial planning as well as analyzing the company's financial strengths and weaknesses and proposing corrective actions. CFO is a member of C-suite and is the third highest position in a company. CFOs have significant input in company's investments, capital structure, and managing company's income and expenses. Also they assist the CEO with forecasting, cost benefit analysis, and obtaining funding for various initiatives. But still with all fast evolving changes around the world, the gender disparity remains unchanged for the C-suite positions in the companies despite small variations in statistics.

The number women being employed in financial and insurance companies have widely increased.  However, the general pattern of women's employment in this sector has shown that there has been a sort of persistent invisible glass ceiling against women acquiring the top management positions. Even though the statistics are very low when compared to number of women employees in the sector there have been some shining examples, who have reached the top positions in India. Corporate India also lags the rest of its Western and Asian peers by a wide margin when it comes to the presence of women on their boards. Only 17.3 percent of companies have women on key decision making bodies. But the changes are on its way as the female representation on boards of large Indian companies has increased by 5.9 percentage points from 11.4 percent in 2015 to 17.3 percent in 2021.

More and more women being employed in the finance and banking sectors gives us hope of a more equal corporate boardroom. In this issue of CEO Insights magazine, we introduce you a list of 'TOP 10 WOMEN CFOs - 2021 who have contributed to the economic development of the country. The following list has been crafted by a team of CEOs, VCs and CEO Insights magazine editorial board, thus delivering inspiring stories of their journey and the contributions & roles played by them in the creation and empowerment of a powerful nation.