Infrastructure has never been an industry that hands out credibility easily. Whether someone works in manufacturing, transmission, engineering or project execution, respect is earned through delivery. Projects have deadlines, customers have expectations and decisions often have significant operational and financial consequences. That is one of the reasons I enjoy working in this sector because performance genuinely matters. At the same time, there is one pattern many women in infrastructure quietly recognise. In many cases, there is an environment wherein competence precedes acceptance of the idea itself. Though this is done unintentionally or in private, it has implications for how the discussion starts and sometimes even for how a career progresses.
What is positive about all this is that things are beginning to change. There are more women participating in infrastructure companies than before, and organisations are making deliberate efforts to recruit diverse teams. However, more representation and changing deeply held perceptions cannot be achieved by the same means. One may come through recruitment, while the latter requires continued effort, leadership commitment and challenging deeply held beliefs for years.
One misconception is that women continue to face barriers because there are too few technically capable professionals entering the industry. The experience that I have had is very much the opposite. I have encountered women in engineering, finance, manufacturing, operations and corporate management who always have an in-depth knowledge of technology, business and handling difficult situations. Capability has never been the issue.
It usually comes down to perceptions. In many cases, women find themselves having to be more prepared for the meeting than men, with the expectation that they will have more questions to answer and the need to defend recommendations with much more thorough explanations for their judgement to get the same amount of respect as anyone else’s. No one ever tells an individual that they have to try harder and prove themselves. But, eventually, an individual realises that certain individuals build credibility for themselves, while others automatically receive it.
{{/usCountry}}It usually comes down to perceptions. In many cases, women find themselves having to be more prepared for the meeting than men, with the expectation that they will have more questions to answer and the need to defend recommendations with much more thorough explanations for their judgement to get the same amount of respect as anyone else’s. No one ever tells an individual that they have to try harder and prove themselves. But, eventually, an individual realises that certain individuals build credibility for themselves, while others automatically receive it.
{{/usCountry}}Professional credibility is not something that stands alone. It is built through experience, which can only be gained by being given significant responsibility to carry out. Leading a project, dealing with a tough customer, addressing a problem at a site, or being the face of the organisation in any major negotiations all play a part.
That is why the role of opportunity is so significant. Since women continue to be assigned roles that require coordination while other people get the responsibility for operations management, the gap continues to grow. The people who are assigned the difficult tasks grow in confidence and make good judgments, and thus become the preferred candidates for bigger roles. The organisations need to move further than just recruiting people; the issue is whether competent professionals get equal opportunities to gain experience.
Today’s organisations do indeed appreciate the importance of mentoring, which is well-deserved. Guidance and wisdom from mentors help mentees to navigate career challenges. Such relationships have a lot of significance, particularly in areas that require a very long period of time to establish a career.
What tends to be overlooked more often is sponsorship. These are the individuals who endorse you for a highly impactful project or recommend you for a leadership position. Such recommendations have much greater influence on your career than any advice ever could. When you look back at your own career history, chances are you will be able to single out one person who decided to take a chance on you even when nobody else saw your true potential. Organisations that encourage creating such sponsors, and not only mentors, can benefit from it.
Whereas in organisational settings, cultural discussions tend to centre on policies and programmes, culture, in actuality, is formed by daily decisions that never make it into any policy documents. It is embodied in who gets called for customer engagements, who speaks up in the review of the board, who travels to the project location, and who facilitates tough conversations where the outcome counts the most.
These decisions gradually determine whose leadership becomes visible within an organisation. Visibility leads to experience, experience builds confidence and confidence creates future leaders. This is the reason why the development of an inclusive work environment is not an issue of compromising on standards or providing any form of preferential treatment. This is because inclusion ensures the fair distribution of opportunities and performance recognition of all employees. The development of good organisations ensures leadership development because of their early trust in competent individuals.
The Indian infrastructure sector is going through one of the most crucial periods of growth for itself. The field of renewable energy, transmission, Battery Energy Storage Systems, green hydrogen and advanced manufacturing is undergoing an amazing transformation in the field of infrastructure. These organisations will require the skills, execution ability, and the ability to lead them through this new phase of growth. However, based on the findings in the 2025 Global Gender Gap report published by the World Economic Forum, there is still a huge imbalance in terms of the representation of females in leadership roles in the technical sector despite the developments in the area of workforce development. This means that much still needs to be done with regard to linking leadership with workforce diversity.
The conversation, however, should not be reduced to meeting diversity targets. Organisations encountering problems with respect to their engineering and operations can greatly profit from developing situations where ideas are valued no matter which individual comes up with them. Companies that continuously recognise talent, develop their leaders and make career paths clear will always have a better chance to prosper because they broaden the field of candidates who can lead them into the future.
I hope that in the future, women joining the field of infrastructure will spend less energy convincing themselves that they have the right to be there and more time engaging in the work they love. This is not a task that can be done by women alone; it involves just as much onus on the part of the organisation shaping the career path through its opportunities, trust, and consistent standards.
The most successful infrastructure businesses of the future will not necessarily be the ones which have built the most ambitious projects or the most innovative technologies. These will be the firms where integrity is appreciated through performance, leadership is developed through opportunities, and talents flourish without having first proven themselves. That is the kind of institution every industry should aspire to build.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Rutvi Sheth-Kundalia, director, Advait Greenergy Private Limited.