Anita Bhogle - Equal, Yet Different: Career Catalysts for the Professional Woman

In December 2013, I unexpectedly found myself seated next to the amazing Narayana Murthy, who was in a very relaxed and jovial mood. My husband Harsha and I had been invited as guest speakers by Infosys to its Mysuru campus. We had just finished our presentation to their senior leadership team, and since there was still some time for lunch, they had organized for us a tour of the impressive campus. To our utter joy, Mr Murthy decided to accompany us in the buggy, so there we were, discussing sport, business and other fun things. I remember there was a bench in the middle of a sprawling lawn and he insisted we have a picture taken on the love seat! Busy young men and women were making their way across the enormous campus on foot or on bicycles. We were told that the well-lit campus had state-of-the-art lighting, making it safer for the large number of young women who worked and lived there. The air smelt of freedom and opportunity. As we finished the guided tour, I said to Mr Murthy, I am jealous. I wish I was born twenty years later. He smiled and took it as a compliment to their commitment to diversity, and then we chatted a bit about building a culture of meritocracy and equal opportunities.

The last two decades have seen a healthy number of women graduate from a wide variety of professional courses in all fields, particularly from management institutes, engineering colleges, law schools, medical colleges and architecture schools. Many make it to the honours list or win medals, and a significant number go on to study further and earn a masters degree or even a doctorate. A visit to any office complex will convince you that men and women have nearly equal representation there. There is no doubt at all that women have it in them to excel in all of these careers. Unlike sport, professions like management, chartered accountancy, medicine, law, architecture and most engineering streams have an advantage as they dont involve any physical prowess, making gender differences irrelevant to careers.

Yet, when you look at the lists of prominent and successful alumni of the very same colleges or office-bearers of industry forums in any of these fields, you will find very few women there. According to Deloitte Globals Women in the Boardroom report2022, a global average of just 19.7 per cent of board seats are held by women. In India, it is a shade less at 17.1 per cent, and even among this, only 3.6 per cent of the boards chairs are women. Compared to the 4.5 per cent figure in 2018, it has dropped by 0.9 per cent over the years. It is an effort to find strong women candidates for leadership and board positions in companies. Even those who were front runners at the start of the race have only a small chance at a podium finish. To what extent does gender become a liability or prove to be a hurdle in the path to success?

For far too long, the term glass ceiling has been bandied about as an explanation for this phenomenon, but I feel it is a rather simplistic and somewhat dubious way to explain the entire situation. It is not like the old days when women were not allowed entry into all-male clubs. Men are not conspiring to hold women back. But bias, whether it is conscious or unconscious, still exists around womens capability and ambition. There are many more missing pieces in this puzzle, not all of which have to do with our work and careers.

Today, women are trying to straddle two equally important but very different worlds. For professionals, work life is very demanding, high pressure and competitive. Those who aspire to remain on top of their game need to give time, energy and focus to their work. At the same time, as nurturers, we remain the ideal caregivers when it comes to our families. Look around and you will find that urban, working women, whether single or married, are increasingly taking on the responsibility of looking after their parents and even siblings. Bearing children is a biological reality, while caring for the ailing and the aged is a social one, especially in the Indian context. Unfortunately, we dont have an adequate and well-managed infrastructure for either childcare or eldercare. Furthermore, many sections of society frown upon such arrangements, forcing women to take on that role full-time and putting an end to their career aspirations. What can the family do to help a woman pursue her dreams? How can organizations ensure that, after becoming mothers, women dont get permanently sidelined? A well-managed home is, without doubt, the stepping stone to a successful career. Knowing that the needs of the family are being attended to sets the mind free to focus on ones career. Do spouses merely say that they are proud of their wives achievements or are they truly supportive in sharing the physical and mental load of bringing up a family and managing a home? The lack of support at home forces a very large percentage of women to recalibrate their ambition. The demand for equality at the workplace has been loud and forceful, but women and their aspirations need equal consideration in the home as well.

For a long time, women assumed that the only route to equality was to try and be like men. We have come full circle, to a time now when gender differences are being celebrated and organizations realize that teams benefit from diversity. Years of conditioning in a patriarchal system have ensured that women are wired differently from men. Women are taught to think about others first; so you could be the most celebrated CEO but when you come home, you become a selfless homemaker. Guilt remains the exclusive preserve of women and is omnipresent!

Women view success very differently from men. Most of them dont openly chase designations or flaunt success symbols for the outside world to see. A womans identity does not come from her career alone. She is a professional, a wife, a mother and more, rolled into one. She views success as the ability to balance these roles in the best possible manner. It was amazing to see the variety of ways in which this balance is being achieved by the women I spoke with and how each ones idea of equilibrium is different from someone elses. Unfortunately, some of this conditioning and related behaviour comes in the way of career success and needs to be unlearnt. Diversity has the potential to strengthen teams; it should not become its weakness.

The challenges that women face are well known and well-documented. I wanted to find out what those who have managed to stay on track have done right. When we look at women achievers in India, there are the usual trailblazers who are often quoted, but there are a number of other women too, who have managed to make their mark despite not being that visible. You will find some of their stories here. I also wanted to know how women who have had to either compromise on their careers or give them up completely feel about their situation. Was it the most sensible decision? Do they have any regrets? Looking back, could they have done things differently? Indian, or perhaps Asian women are different from their western counterparts in that family plays a much bigger role in our lives, and our parents and spouses have a substantial say in the choices we make. That is a significant factor, since even the personal life choices that we make impact our chances at professional success.