Women’s leadership in India’s development sector presents a paradox. There’s plenty of scaffolding—mentoring circles, workshops, leadership academies, networking dinners—built with genuine intention and care. Women climb it. They lean in, network, build credentials, and do the quiet work of becoming legible to power. And yet numbers and conversations are not as promising as they should be.

According to a study published in 2025, women hold 67 percent of leadership in small social sector organisations, 58 percent in mid-sized ones, and only 29 percent once an organisation becomes large enough to shape the sector.

Researchers across the landscape of women’s leadership call this a ‘leaky pipeline’, which is based on the idea that women drop off or choose not to pursue certain career trajectories. But this metaphor conceals more than it reveals. Pipes leak, and no one in particular is responsible for a puddle. But this leak has a location.

Read more at: https://idronline.org/article/perspectives/where-are-the-mid-career-women-leaders/