Hey Everyone,

Here is an interesting article I received about female bankers in India and how they vary from females working in North America. It was an interesting read so I thought I'd share it with you.

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NY Times, January 28, 2010
The Female Factor
Female Bankers in India Earn Chances to Rule
By HEATHER TIMMONS
MUMBAI — In New York and London, women remain scarce among top bankers despite decades of struggle to climb the corporate ladder. But in India’s relatively young financial industry, women not only are some of the top deal makers, they are often running the show.
HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS and Fidelity International in India are run by women. So is the country’s second-biggest bank, Icici Bank, and its third-largest, Axis Bank. Women head investment banking operations at Kotak Mahindra and JPMorgan Chase and the equities division of Icici. Half of the deputy governors at the Reserve Bank of India are women.
In a country where parents in some areas still prize boys over girls; where overall female literacy rates are poor; and Sania Mirza, a top tennis player, said this month that she would quit playing after marriage, the banking industry’s wealth of women in management may seem surprising. But women in the industry, many of whom have also worked in London and New York, say India provided the right combination of supportive, mostly male, managers and a diverse work environment that did not require them to be “one of the boys” to succeed.
This “isn’t a golf-playing, beer-drinking homogeneous culture,” said Naina Lal Kidwai, group managing director and country head of HSBC in India and a former head of Morgan Stanley’s investment bank in India. Male bankers and managers run the gamut from devoutly religious to devoted family men to late-night socialites.
Women “could join the workplace on their own terms,” Ms. Kidwai said. “You still have to network, you still have to work hard, but that made it easier.”
That means India is without an old Wall Street staple: Women who feel they must act like the stereotypical male banker to advance. There are no swaggering “masters of the universe” in this group. Top female managers regularly wear saris and talk openly about their children and husbands.
These women handle many of India’s biggest deals — raising $9.7 billion for the power company NTPC or negotiating Vodafone Group’s purchase of an $11.1 billion stake in Hutchison Essar.
Almost all of them are in their 40s and 50s, are from wealthy backgrounds, went to excellent schools in India and abroad, and graduated at the top of their classes before excelling at the bank they joined. So they often enjoy the same status as the men who were their competition and their banking clients.
Banking may be more of a meritocracy than other professions, women in the business say, because there is an easy way to keep score: Look at the bottom line.
“You got your next big challenge based on your performance and your potential, not whether you were male or female,” said Chanda Kochhar, chief executive of Icici Bank, where women make up 40 percent of the senior management. Mrs. Kochhar has been at the bank for her entire 25-year career, moving from corporate to retail banking, then directing the international business before becoming chief financial officer.
Women “excel when they are subject to an open competition,” said Shyamala Gopinath, one of the Reserve Bank of India’s two female deputy governors.
India operations of big global banks constitute a tiny portion of overall profits, because debt markets and deal size and volume are smaller than in developed countries. But India’s importance has grown as investment banks bet on emerging markets for growth and simultaneously move more complicated jobs to India to cut costs at home.
So sometimes these women oversee more employees than many top managers at the banks’ headquarters.
About 11 percent of HSBC’s 331,000 employees are in India, for example, and of JPMorgan Chase’s 220,000 employees, nearly 7 percent are in India.
One in five of India’s big bank, insurance and money-management companies is headed by a woman, according to a study by the headhunting group EMA Partners. By contrast, there are no women leading major American or European banks, and no woman has ever run a Wall Street investment bank.
Bosses sometimes gravitate toward women in India because they think “women are less corruptible, more straightforward and above board most of the time,” said K. Sudarshan, managing partner, India, for EMA.
In terms of compensation, none of the women interviewed said they had ever felt they were paid a different amount than their male counterparts.
“Here salary is totally nondiscriminatory,” said Usha Thorat, the other female deputy reserve governor at India’s central bank. The idea that women might be paid less for the same job as men in the United States “came as a surprise to me,” she said.
At the same time, women in banking in India say they have always felt more pressure than men.
“Always, that is a given,” Ms. Kidwai said. “It was very clear we had to perform better and work harder.”
She added that the women now heading banks had often been the first women hired in their early jobs and had been “watched like hawks.”
And they all relied heavily on a support network of family and India’s cheap labor pool to help watch their children. Some enlisted mothers and mothers-in-law for child care for months or years, and all of them employed full-time nannies and maids.
The length of maternity leave differs from bank to bank, but the average is about three months.
Meera Sanyal, head of RBS in India, started working in India at a branch office of Grindlays Bank in Calcutta, dealing with a barrage of upset corporate customers and a unionized staff that resented her for replacing an older man. She revamped the way the bank handled clients, according to profitability; learned Bengali to communicate better with the local staff; and ultimately convinced reluctant unions to accept automation, though it would mean layoffs.
She was working at Lazard in India when she became pregnant with her first child. She recalls that when she told her boss she wanted to work flexible hours after her baby was born, he said: “Are you crazy? We’ve invested a lot of money in you.”
Rather than quit, she said, she vowed to work so hard until she gave birth that Lazard would feel it had gotten its money’s worth. She wrapped up a deal on July 6 and delivered the baby a day later. After that, her boss reconsidered, allowing her to work flexible hours for the same pay. There are several men, she said, who “made it possible for me to do what I wanted to do.”
Now she is doing the same for other women at the bank. Recently, a risk manager said she needed to quit because she was pregnant and had been prescribed bed rest. Ms. Sanyal suggested that the bank set up a home office instead that would allow her to work from bed. After having a healthy baby, “she’s back at work and absolutely a star performer,” Ms. Sanyal said.
“Small things like that cost us nothing,” she added. “It is just a way of being more flexible.”
Kalpana Morparia, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase in India, had some simple advice for Western banks that are trying to increase the number of women at the top. “Just be gender neutral,” she said. “Men are just as smart as we are.”

Hello Everyone!

We are finalizing all the sponsorship for the Miss India Worldwide pageant. Thank you to everyone who has supported to date. Once again, a big thank you to:

Kamp Photography, Angie Zachary, Murray Chevrolet Hummer, Lakewood Dental Centre, Entegra Credit Union, Sharma Auto, Mrs. Ashwani Kumar, Hilary Druxman and Kamta Singh with Tim Hortons and Guyanese Association of Manitoba. 

Please make sure to support these sponsors. They provided so much support to me. It's so nice to feel the support of these businesses and to have their faith in me.

We are finalizing a few more sponsorships, so check back soon to see the full sponsorship list.

If you would like to be apart of this year's sponsorship, please email contactus@amindhillon.com to request a sponsorship package. What's really great is that we are now able to provide charity tax receipts for monetary sponsorships. So it's win/win!

Cheers!

-Amin xox

Good news! You can watch clips from the Bollywood Dance Workshop on Shaw TV on Friday Jan 22 and Saturday Jan 23. If you don't have Shaw TV,  you can watch the clips on their website at www.shawtv.com/winnipeg, under Arts and Entertainment, then click on "Backstage".

Cheers!

-Amin xo

Ohhhh so sore today! Today was the last day of the Bollywood Dance Workshops and my body aches! It was a blast.  I really want to find some fun dance classes. It's fun and such a good workout! I can barely walk lol. Met some really great people and I'm looking forward to dancing with them again...soon! If you have any Bollywood dance classes in your area, I would highly recommend taking a class or two! Who doesn't want to feel like a real life Bollywood item girl, regardless of where you live???? Ok, I'm off to soak in some really hot water and wait for my muscles to recover.

Cheers!

-Amin xo

Hey Everyone!

Here's a pic from the Guyanese NYE Dinner that I thought I'd share.  Make sure to add me on twitter! www.twitter.com/amindhillon I'm trying to get more active on Twitter so follow me!

Hello!

Here's an update on the Bollywood Dance workshops I am presenting in Winnipeg. We changed the dates from this weekend to next weekend so now the workshop will be from Jan 15-17 at Canad Inns Polo Park, in Ambassador K.

The workshop on Friday Jan 15 will begin at 7 pm and will be 1.5 hours. On Saturday Jan 16 the class will begin at 4 pm for 1.5 hours and on Sunday Jan 17 the class will begin at 1 pm for 2 hours.

If you have not already registered, email contactus@amindhillon.com to register for this workshop....this is an unique opportunity to learn from a Bollywood choreographer in Winnipeg! Trust me, you will be blown away by the awesome dance moves!

Cheers!

-Amin xo

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

I had an amazing New Year's Eve last night! First I stopped by the Guyanese NYE Dinner and Dance with Mom. The event was so much fun and I was glad to come out and support the Guyanese Association.

Next Mom and I went our separate ways as I was spending the rest of my night at TYC. The club was packed and it was amazing! Ace Burpee from HOT 103 was hosting the night and at midnight, he launched the rockets to shoot money all over the dance floor, creating "purple rain".  Thanks to everyone who came out and said hello! Here are a few pics from my night....