New Delhi: A parliamentary panel Wednesday recommended evolving a strategy for women reservation in public sector banks (PSBs) to increase their strength and representation in the banking sector, which it said was "not promising".
The report 'Working Conditions of Women in Public Sector Banks' has been brought out by Committee on Empowerment of Women.
"At present women comprise about 24 percent of the workforce of PSBs and more than half are in the clerical cadre. The Committee strongly is of the view that the government and the respective banks may resort to innovative ways to attract more women into PSBs," it said.
"The Committee recommend that the respective PSBs and the Ministry of Finance should evolve some concrete strategy to earmark certain categories/percentage of posts in PSBs for women so that their strength could be increased substantially," it said.
Citing examples from the Navy and Army, it suggested that the Finance Ministry and PSBs may also launch campaigns both in electronic and print media to inculcate interest among womenfolk of the country for a career in banks.
Suggesting to improve the percentage of women in higher grades as there are only 138 women employees at top executive grades and 1,719 in senior management levels in PSBs, the Committee recommended to set up special cells under the supervision of the Ministry in their Headquarters and Zonal offices to deal with the cases of women employees who have forgone their promotions citing their inability to relocate to other places on account of family reasons or otherwise.
"The cells may be entrusted with the responsibility of exclusively looking after the problems of these employees and offer alternative postings from the cumulative roster, if possible by the PSBs," it said.
