Working Women in India: Corporate Apathy at large?

September 2013

One of the matters quite close to my heart !

For starters, it is not a rant. Not even a disgruntled discourse. In all honesty, it is a simple account of my journey from a stardust-in-her-eyes , raring to go young professional to a disillusioned, stay at home mother. And while chasing that elusive and mythical work-life balance, i have stumbled across some very pertinent questions that need to be answered.

The basic premise behind this entire piece is whether the Indian Corporate system is women friendly. And despite a lot of tall claims and debates, the reality is grim and morose.

A lot has been written and said about gender equality and gender sensitivity in the work force. How out of a large no of women joining the corporate sector year after year, a major chunk drop out before or at the middle level and a very minuscule percentage make it to top positions / boardrooms. Heads shake in disapproval, there is talk about reforms and policy shifts and yet the end result is always dismal. At least this is what it is to a large extent. There are always exceptions, i agree.

The main reason behind this drop out is family commitments. Translation – the moment a woman becomes a mother, her corporate life is practically over. And at par with practical issues, is the corporate mindset. Let me explain how.

When a man becomes a father, his stake in the corporate world rises. He is seen as more stable, responsible and a mature asset for the company. On the contrary, the moment a woman declares she is going to be a mother, her competence and relevance become questionable and she becomes a liability. While a certain amount of concern and sensitivity is required with a pregnant employee, why should pregnancy or motherhood render an otherwise excellent company resource as a handicap or invalid, is beyond my logical mind.

And the answer is short term profits. On hearing about a pregnant employee, almost every organization does a quick calculation of how many months of optimum productivity would be lost because of the impending motherhood. And hence a better solution would be to take on a new resource that would not be bound by these constraints. The pregnant employee meanwhile will be relegated to a less ”challenging” role and as is expected, in most cases, voluntarily withdraw from active service within the first 3-4 years of a baby’s life !

While in theory such a calculation proves superb, it’s harming the organization and the corporate setup at large in the long run. Retention is better than attrition and a stable, settled employee is always more productive than a new resource is something that HR journals are made up of. And yet so little of it is practiced in reality.

Then there is this mammoth issue of support systems for working mothers. Barring a small percentage of “lucky” women to have family support, a large no of them have to rely on uneducated and untrained maids or for the need of choosing a lesser evil – the day care centers. To begin with the maid system, i don’t think anybody needs to be educated about the perils of leaving a young child alone with a maid. Notwithstanding the CCTVs, unannounced surprise visits to home and overlooking a lot of small & big things – each day starts with a prayer for a safe day for your child. That the maid is feeding your child properly and not mistreating her, you invariably have to put up with the influence and grooming your child gets at the hands of a maid. She is after all, a maid ! And 3-4 hours of spending quality time with your toddler will never negate the effects of 10-12 hours of the maid’ upbringing !

Day care centers are no better for they are largely a part of an unregulated system. Hygiene, meals, involvement are always an issue. Here is where my personal experience of a very highly reputed day  care comes into picture. It’s a very upmarket day care, lauded for its live web streaming facility and net savvy tactics. The reality is that most of the caregivers there are not appropriately trained in child handling, something that you will expect of a day care of this standard. And the meals are a big issue. For all the fancy claims about having a nutritionist on board, it fails me to understand why do young kids need nutritional guidance. As long as its not junk food or stale/sub standard ingredients being used, kids need all the energy they can get. Serving dry roti rolls with just a filling of beans/carrot (at times twice in a day), watery daal with not even a drop of ghee, no side salad/yoghurt, and watery kheer / custard with barely a single fruit – for any sensible and health conscious mother who feeds her child aloo paranthas, daal/roti with ghee, yoghurt and salad everyday just to make sure all food groups are included in her child’s diet – it is a nightmare! And when your child starts losing weight you in arguably question your need to work!

Here i tend my apology for digressing from the core topic. But in order to understand the life and choices of a working mother, it was important to understand her pressures.

And now comes the most potent force behind this drop out. The attitude of superiors at work place. As i said earlier, a working mother is always considered an average performer. Just because she might have to leave early to pick up her child from day care or tend to family commitments too, her perception is always on the bottom. So an employee who wastes 2 hours every day in cigarette/coffee/lunch / net surfing breaks in office is still a better performer because he is clocking in the required hours or staying back late. Whereas a mother who finishes her work but wants to leave early is a waste of company resources! So they fare poorly at appraisals, given half a chance at promotions / pay hikes and not given meaty profiles/projects.

Also widely rampant is the phenomenon of exploiting women who are on a comeback after a child break. Not only are they forced to accept lower designations and lower pay packages, the prospective employers very smugly point it out that they no longer have professional networking or pose a greater risk of not being able to match up to their job expectations. i have come across many a such discriminating come-back tales. And the questions to be asked here are - a woman might have lost out on 3 years of professional life but that does not give the employers the right to pay her even lesser than what she was getting. How can they deduct her sabbatical years from her work ex? And reviving professional skills or networking is just a matter of days, there has to be some merit for experience too! For those who need a reality check, one of the prospective employers very candidly shared that companies have to look after their interests too. If they are getting a better experienced person for an X amount of money for which they would normally get a fresher / less exp, why will they not take it. So they corner the women on their gap, making it their disadvantage and make it work in their favour. if this is not exploitation, then i don’t know what is !

Which brings me back to the last part of this piece and your very justifiable query after reading all this – what is the role of the Corporate here?

The answer – take responsibility of your potential 50% work force!

Formulate women friendly policies. When the govt can come up with a scheme like Aanganwaadi where the women labourers are encouraged to work by providing them with a caregiver for their children at their place of work, what is stopping the more educated and sensible organizations from providing day care facilities at the workplace?

How about some efforts to push for the regulation of the day care industry? If the corporate bodies can lobby for important policies with the government, they can surely extend their support to this cause as well.

Even promote or tie-up with leading / credible caregiver / nanny providing agencies that provide trained, educated, certified nannies to the women employees. I cannot for a moment think of any working mother who would not avail of such a facility. And that it’s boosting the employee morale, bringing immense job satisfaction and increasing company loyalty, could be any layman’s guess.

And lastly do not treat working mothers as a liability. Work out a system wherein maybe the women who are in particularly taxing roles like sales, get a more relaxed profile for 2 years or maybe can do with flexi timings or work from home option. The amount of time that gets wasted in office commute esp. in metros can very easily be utilized tending to her family commitments. Also 4 fully productive hours are way better than 8 exhausting hours. There could always be weekly review meetings at office. Believe me any mother would certainly look forward to that weekly review, if it means doing away with those motherly duties for a couple of hours!

In a nutshell, nurture your 50% equally and at times better productive work force. It’s all about nurturing from within the organization, just like a tree which when the time comes reaps huge rewards. Because nothing spells a more stable, loyal employee than a working mother who is happy at her work.

And let’s not forget, given the current social scenario, when we talk about changing the societal mindset and sensitizing the society, we are in reality doing just the opposite. The biggest role player in a child’s life and thus the society at large – a mother- is being de-incentivized for being just that – a mother! For, in all my limited but exhausting experience as a mother, the fact is that babies need copious amounts of quantity time and slowly as the child grows, quality very easily replaces quantity . So actually it’s all a function of time. If we can only have some patience and look for long term rewards!

Till the time we do this, the proverbial GLASS CEILING will never be shattered!!!