Ola’s new factory will be run entirely by women
“This is the first in a series of initiatives we are undertaking at Ola to create a more inclusive workforce and provide economic opportunities for women across the board.”
—CEO Bhavish Aggarwal
September 13, 2021
The gist: Ola Electric, the electric-scooter maker spun out of Indian ride-sharing company Ola, is opening a massive factory “that will produce one in seven of the world’s e-scooters by next year, produced entirely by the largest—10,000—all-female automotive workforce in the world. Ola’s workers “being trained to fill a variety of technical roles, from production assistants to supervisors.” On the ground level, “workers will be manning the floors, carrying out maintenance and repairs, within the heavily automated facility. It joins other Indian Corp’s like Kirloskar Brothers, which produces industrial valves, “and has been running a women-only factory in Coimbatore for over a decade,” and, “Mumbai-based consumer goods behemoth Hindustan Unilever has since December 2014 had a 100% female shop floor at its Haridwar plant.”
The #faxx:
Employers feel women are better at following complex instructions, taking fewer breaks, registering higher attendance, and being more dextrous, making them well-suited to factory jobs. However, women have so far lacked awareness of vacancies and dependable role models in the sector.
“There are misconceptions that women cannot work in manufacturing because there is a lot of heavy lifting to do. And yet, today’s automated shop floors mean that everything is mechanized, and some hauls and lifts do all the heavy lifting,” Gajendra Chandel, the former chief human resource officer at Tata Motors, said in 2017. “All that needs to be done is to train women to work in such plants, especially in areas where a higher order of dexterity and motor skills are required.”
Link to the Quartz India article here, and Fast Company here.
Photo: Ola