Female Wages as % of Total Wages — BRSR Core Attribute

What this attribute is

Female Wages as a Percentage of Total Wages is one of the nine BRSR Core attributes that SEBI requires every Top-1,000 listed entity to subject to independent reasonable assurance. It is one of three Core attributes under NGRBC Principle 3 — Wellbeing of Employees, alongside Spend on Wellbeing and POSH Complaints Disclosure.

The attribute measures the share of the entity’s total wage-bill paid to female members of the workforce. It is a workforce-composition-and-pay metric — a higher percentage signals greater female participation in the workforce, weighted by the wage levels of the roles they hold. It is not a pay-gap metric (it does not directly measure compensation parity between male and female employees in equivalent roles); UK Gender Pay Gap Reporting and the EU Pay Transparency Directive cover that question separately.

This is the most operationally precise of the three P3 Core attributes in calculation terms — clean numerator and denominator from the audited payroll register, no multi-component sub-disclosure (unlike POSH), no benefit-bucket composition (unlike Wellbeing Spend). The complexity is in the payroll-basis definition of “gross wages” and the cohort-scope choice — both areas where the SEBI December 2024 Industry Standards circular sets the prescribed convention.

Formula and units

Female Wages (%) = (Gross wages paid to females, employees + workers, during FY)
                 ÷ (Total wages paid by the entity, employees + workers, during FY) × 100

Per the SEBI December 2024 Industry Standards on Reporting of BRSR Core, this attribute uses wages paid to both the employees cohort and the workers cohort. The numerator is gross wages paid to females across both; the denominator is total wages paid by the entity across both — same payroll basis on both sides.

Wages should typically include salaries, wages, and bonus per the audited financial statements; exclude retirement benefits (PF, gratuity, ESI, superannuation, NPS), ESOPs and similar equity-based compensation, and staff welfare expenses (the staff-welfare component is captured separately by the wellbeing-spend BRSR Core attribute).

The output is a percentage — unitless. PPP normalisation (which applies to the P6 physical-quantity intensity attributes) does not apply here.

The numerator: Gross wages paid to females (employees + workers)

The numerator is gross wages paid to female members of the workforce — covering both the employees cohort and the workers cohort per the SEBI December 2024 Industry Standards convention — during the reporting financial year, calculated on the entity’s documented payroll basis.

The wage-data extraction is from the entity’s payroll records reconciled to the audited financial statements. The gender split typically comes from the HR master records (which capture gender as a structured field, even where the payroll system does not) — see the data-capture-gap FAQ for the reconciliation path when the payroll itself doesn’t carry gender.

Payroll-basis nuance — what’s included, excluded, and IT-DEPENDS

Per the SEBI December 2024 Industry Standards on Reporting of BRSR Core, total wages should include salaries, wages, and bonus per the audited financial statements, and exclude retirement benefits, ESOPs, and staff welfare expenses. Bonus accrued but not paid during the period may be apportioned using an appropriate disclosed basis. Specific allowance and overtime components follow the entity’s audited payroll basis and must be applied consistently across the numerator and denominator.

Component	BRSR Core gross-wages treatment
Salaries (basic + dearness allowance)	Included — per audited financial statements
Bonus (paid during the period)	Included — per audited financial statements
Bonus (accrued but not paid)	May be apportioned using an appropriate disclosed basis (entity’s documented choice)
Regular allowances (HRA, conveyance, special, etc.)	Per the entity’s audited payroll basis — applied consistently
Overtime	Per the entity’s audited payroll basis — applied consistently
PF / EPF contributions (employer side)	Excluded — separately disclosed under retirement benefits
Gratuity (accrued / paid)	Excluded — separately disclosed under retirement benefits
ESI contributions (employer side)	Excluded — separately disclosed under retirement benefits
Superannuation, NPS contributions	Excluded — separately disclosed
ESOPs / share-based payments	Excluded — equity compensation, not wages
Staff welfare expenses	Excluded — captured separately by the wellbeing-spend BRSR Core attribute
Reimbursements (travel, expense, mobile)	Excluded — reimbursements are not wages

The most common source of numerator-vs-denominator inconsistency in audit reconciliation is the bonus-accrual/payment treatment and the inclusion/exclusion of specific allowance categories — both must apply identically to the numerator and the denominator. See the common findings below.

The denominator: Total wages paid by the entity (employees + workers)

The denominator is total wages paid by the entity during the reporting financial year, on the same payroll basis as the numerator — same period cut-off, same inclusion / exclusion of allowances and bonuses, same treatment of accrued-vs-paid items. The cohort is employees and workers (per the SEBI December 2024 convention).

The key publication-safe point is basis consistency, not a universal mapping from specific P&L line items: whichever payroll basis the entity adopts (anchored to the audited financial statements per the SEBI guidance), the same basis must apply on both sides of the calculation, and the basis itself should be disclosed alongside the figure. A reconciliation between the entity’s wages numerator/denominator and the audited financial statements should be retained as workpaper evidence — the form of that reconciliation depends on the entity’s chart-of-accounts structure and accounting policy.

Cohort scope — employees AND workers, per SEBI December 2024 guidance

The SEBI December 2024 Industry Standards on Reporting of BRSR Core is explicit that this attribute uses wages paid to both employees and workers. The cohort scope is therefore not a per-entity policy choice on this attribute — both cohorts are in scope on the numerator (female employees + female workers) and on the denominator (all employees + all workers).

What is the entity’s documented choice is the definition of each cohort — what counts as “employee” and what counts as “worker” in the entity’s Section A workforce table. Whatever those definitions are, they must be applied consistently:

• Same on both the numerator and the denominator
• Same as the cohort definitions used in other BRSR Core attributes that span both groups (POSH Complaints, Wellbeing Spend)
• Same year-on-year unless the entity discloses a documented change in definition

This cohort treatment is consistent with the POSH Core attribute (also employees + workers) and with the Wellbeing Spend Core attribute (also includes both cohorts in the spend numerator).

Worked example

Illustrative only — not representative of a typical company. Female-wages share varies materially by sector and workforce composition. IT-services entities commonly run in the 30-45% range; manufacturing entities typically run in single digits to mid-teens; banking and financial services run in the 25-35% range. The numbers below are constructed to make the calculation structure clear; an actual filing must use the entity’s audited payroll register on the basis prescribed by the SEBI Industry Standards circular.

Same diversified mid-cap manufacturer used in the prior worked examples — declared operational-control boundary, standalone listed entity, FY 2024-25:

Step 1 — Numerator: gross wages paid to females (employees + workers)

Female-cohort breakdown across both groups (averaged across the year):

Cohort	Female count	Female gross wages (₹ Cr)
Female employees	~429	22.0
Female workers	~191	11.0
Total female	~620	33.0

Wages on the documented payroll basis (salaries + DA + paid bonus per audited financials; allowance and overtime treatment per the entity’s audited payroll basis applied consistently; excluding retirement benefits, ESOPs, and staff welfare expenses).

Step 2 — Denominator: total wages paid by the entity (employees + workers)

Same payroll basis applied to the full workforce (employees + workers):

Cohort	Total count	Total wages (₹ Cr)
Employees	~1,750	185.0
Workers	~1,400	85.0
Total workforce	~3,150	270.0

(The wages totals reconcile to the entity’s audited financial statements on the documented payroll basis, with retirement benefits, ESOPs, staff welfare, and reimbursements stripped out per the SEBI Industry Standards convention. The form of the reconciliation depends on the entity’s chart-of-accounts structure.)

Step 3 — Female Wages %

Female Wages % = 33.0 ÷ 270.0 × 100 = 12.2%

This 12.2% figure is illustrative for this constructed manufacturer example. There is no SEBI benchmark that makes any specific percentage inherently typical or atypical — the figure should be interpreted in context of the entity’s sector, workforce composition, and disclosed payroll basis.

The BRSR XBRL filing carries this percentage in the relevant taxonomy element (verify the current MCA-published BRSR taxonomy for the exact element name), with both current-year and previous-year values populated.

Reference: SEBI Industry Standards on Reporting of BRSR Core (December 2024)

SEBI’s December 20, 2024 Industry Standards circular (SEBI/HO/CFD/CFD-SEC-2/P/CIR/2024/177) is the primary reference for the prescribed calculation methodology on the BRSR Core attributes — including the payroll-basis treatment for female wages. The circular was developed by the Industry Standards Forum (ISF) in collaboration with ASSOCHAM, CII, and FICCI, and is mandatory for listed entities from FY 2024-25 onwards.

Where this page describes “the entity’s documented payroll basis” or “IT-DEPENDS” treatment of bonuses, the December 2024 circular and the current MCA-published BRSR taxonomy are the authoritative source of the prescribed convention. Entities should refer to those before locking the calculation for the assured filing.

What’s NOT in gross wages

Per the SEBI December 2024 Industry Standards convention, the wages numerator and denominator exclude:

• Retirement benefits — PF, gratuity, ESI, superannuation, NPS contributions. Reported separately under the Principle 3 Essential indicator on retirement-benefits coverage.
• ESOPs / share-based payments — equity compensation, not wages. Reported separately in the financial statements per Ind AS 102 Share-based Payment.
• Staff welfare expenses — captured separately by the Wellbeing Spend BRSR Core attribute.
• Reimbursements — travel, expense, mobile, fuel, communication. These are operating-cost reimbursements, not compensation.

A reconciliation between the entity’s wages totals and the audited financial statements should be retained as workpaper evidence. The exact form of that reconciliation depends on the entity’s chart-of-accounts structure and accounting policy — there is no canonical bridge formula that fits every entity’s GL setup. The publication-safe point is basis consistency: same basis on numerator and denominator, basis itself disclosed alongside the figure.

Common practice patterns in audit

Common practice patterns observed in BRSR Core assurance engagements — not SEBI-recognised categories of finding:

1. Numerator-denominator basis mismatch. The female-wages numerator is calculated on accrued bonus basis; the total-wages denominator uses paid basis. Or different allowance categories are included in each. The two sides must use the same payroll basis — this is the most common finding on this attribute.
2. Gender-data reconciliation gap. The payroll register doesn’t carry gender as a structured field, so the female subset is back-calculated from the HR master. The reconciliation between payroll wages and HR-master gender is itself the audit-trail; if it has gaps (employees in payroll without HR-master gender mapping), the disclosure carries a methodology footnote.
3. Cohort scope inconsistency. The numerator uses one cohort definition (e.g., excludes fixed-term contractors); the denominator uses another. Same fix as #1: same scope on both sides.
4. Period cut-off issues with mid-year hires/exits. The treatment of joiners and leavers within the year — full-period wage or pro-rated — should be consistent with the entity’s payroll-basis methodology and applied symmetrically. Pro-rating one side and not the other distorts the percentage.
5. Non-binary or undeclared gender treatment — entity policy + documentation. Some entities have workforce members who do not identify as male or female, or who have not declared gender in HR records. The SEBI material does not prescribe a specific treatment for this case — the entity must adopt a documented policy (excluded from both numerator and denominator, included in denominator only, or separately disclosed) and apply it consistently. The chosen treatment should be disclosed in the entity’s BRSR notes; this is an internal-control documentation point rather than a SEBI-prescribed rule.
6. Gender pay-parity confusion. Stakeholders (sometimes including audit committees) misread a low female-wages share as evidence of pay-gap inequity when it is in fact workforce-composition. The disclosed metric is share of total wage-bill, not pay-per-equivalent-role. The disclosure narrative can clarify, with a separate pay-gap analysis disclosed if the entity reports under additional regimes.

XBRL filing

This attribute is filed in the BRSR XBRL instance document under the relevant element from the MCA-published BRSR taxonomy module. Element names and unit references should be verified against the current MCA taxonomy version before generating the instance document. Both current-year and previous-year context references must be populated.

See XBRL Taxonomy for BRSR for the structural overview.

How this attribute rolls up into the BRSR Core engagement

This is one of the three Core attributes under Principle 3. The signed BRSR Core assurance report attests this percentage to reasonable assurance under SAE 3000 (Revised). Workpapers retained by the assurance partner cover the payroll-basis reconciliation from the audited P&L employee-benefit-expense to the BRSR wages denominator, the gender-split reconciliation between payroll and HR master, the cohort-scope alignment between numerator and denominator, and the documented treatment of bonuses, fixed-term contracts, and any non-binary or undeclared-gender workforce.

For the engagement that produces the signed assurance opinion, see BRSR Core Assurance. For SME suppliers being asked by their Top-1,000 listed customer to provide assured employee-wages data as part of value-chain reporting, see BRSR Value Chain Verification.

Related reading

• NGRBC Principle 3 — Wellbeing of Employees — parent pillar
• Spend on Wellbeing as % of Revenue — sibling P3 Core attribute
• POSH Complaints Disclosure — sibling P3 Core attribute (also uses female employees + workers per the SEBI Industry Standards convention)
• Document Evidence Requirements — full evidence checklist including HR master + payroll
• XBRL Taxonomy for BRSR — XBRL filing structure
• BRSR Core Assurance — service
• BRSR Value Chain Verification — service