Women’s rights in India’s IT sector: Does equality work across continents?

The paper investigates experiences of women IT professionals in India from two groups - first group comprising of women experiencing differences in work-life balance, inequalities, and challenges of equal rights when they are working in different IT projects with a Swedish or US client. The second group of women comprising of ‘activists who have initiated to set up solidarity network groups on social media to ensure better work-life balance and equal rights. An interpretive research approach with one hundred and fifty semi-structured interviews with IT professionals and an inductive analysis was adopted for this study. Findings highlight how equality, diversity and inclusion policies from West are transformed in Indian contexts, how this has implications for women’s work-life balance and retention in transnational organisations in India. The importance of women’s activism in IT is highlighted as it contributes to creating solidarity networks providing unique bonding space, comfort for women IT professionals. Keywords – equality, IT, women’s rights, work-life balance, solidarity networks