How Close are we to a Gender Just Workplace?

 A couple of years back, when I reached office after attending an International Women’s Day event, my team surprised me with a huge bouquet of baby pink roses and a beautiful handmade card inscribed with thoughtful messages. I was thrilled- who wouldn’t be to receive such a token of affection from their team. But after the mandatory photographs were taken, and I sat back with my coffee, the subtle scent of the roses almost seemed to mock me.

Yes, I was leading an entire region. But was the fact that I was the only woman in the regional office really a matter of pride? At the entry level, nearly a third of the staff was female; why then were we so poorly represented at the managerial level?

I thought of the lady who had put in her papers two weeks earlier when her mother fell ill. Her brother couldn’t look after her, so she had to take a break to be a full time caregiver. Neither she nor I knew when she would be back in the formal workforce, and how long she would remain there before another family emergency demanded a sacrifice.

I though of the young lady who had dazzled me during the interview process. I really wanted to recruit her, but she had backed out when informed that she would need to travel for a week at a time once every quarter; she had young children and while she was willing to work long hours and on weekends, she couldn’t travel for more than a day or two at a time.

I thought of the young lady who would hop onto her two-wheeler and zip down district highways to monitor the rural programmes. Her parents worried about her safety and forced her to leave the job she loved and take up one in retail marketing instead.

I had tried really hard to bring more women into the management team, and the sweet smell of roses constantly reminded me of my failure.

But was the lack of gender diversity at my office my failing, or was it symptomatic of a larger problem? The latter, according to all the studies on employment in India. According to the NSS (National Sample Survey), for instance, as of January 2018, 77% of the Indian workforce is male. This figure includes not just formal and full-time employment, but also casual labourers, part time workers, self employed and even those helping in family enterprises with or without a formal contract.

The reason for this gap is simple. In India, housework, child care and elderly care is seen as the sole responsibility of the women, and Indian women put in as much as 3.29 billion hours of unpaid labour everyday. These activities are both unpaid and unrecognised, and after discharging these responsibilities, women simply do not have the time to seek paid employment elsewhere.* While young women certainly have aspirations of working and being financially independent, most women drop out of the formal workforce after they get married either because of societal expectations or because they are just not able to manage to balance full time work with housework and caregiving.

As in the case of my former colleague, elder care is automatically assumed to be the responsibility of the women, and women are forced to sacrifice their careers if either a parent or a parent-in-law falls ill.

Parenthood is the next barrier that working women have to cross. While many women continue to work well into the third trimester of the first pregnancy, in the absence of adequate childcare felicities at the workplace, and given the fact that child-rearing is still considered the prime responsibility of the mother, very few are able to get back to full-time paid employment. Since few workplaces allow flexible working hours, work from home options or part time employment, most women end up taking a career break after they give birth, and this break often ends up being a permanent one.

Women who do re-enter the workplace after childbirth are often forced to compromise on their career progression since they are unable to work long hours and travel extensively. The additional responsibility of child rearing also limits the choices available to women, particularly mothers of younger children.

Workplace safety is another factor that affects women’s participation in the workplace. Women are discouraged from entering many fields, or taking up certain roles that are deemed unsuitable for them. Engineering is one such field. Though almost a third of engineering graduates in India are women, very few take up engineering jobs and many of them drop out because working conditions are not conducive to women. Women are also discouraged from taking up jobs that involve travel, and this pushback comes both from their families and from prospective employers.

Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) is a measure of the number of people who are employed and actively seeking employment. In 2018-19, in urban India, LFPR for men was 73.8%, and for women 21.1%. This implies that four out of every five women are not only not engaged in paid employment, they are not even actively seeking employment.

The situation in my office was not an aberration; it was clearly a reflection of prevailing norms. It is a very small percentage of women who join the formal workplace, and a smaller percentage who continue in the workplace.

One way to increase the gender diversity is for organizations to adopt policies that encourage women to remain in the workplace. This involves setting up childcare facilities in the office premises, offering flexitime, part time and work from home opportunities, and encouraging all employees (not just the women) to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Other measures like period leave, sick leave for illnesses of children will also make it easier to retain women in the workplace.

However, ultimately, it is societal expectations that need to change. Families need to realise that housework, caregiving and childrearing are not gendered roles, and that both partners should participate equally in both. It is only when men start taking on greater responsibility at home that the workforce participation of women will increase and they will be able to achieve their full potential.

In an ideal world, the roses I received on International Women’s Day should be distributed between all the employees, male and female, to celebrate a gender just workplace.

* According to reports, regardless of their professional qualifications and/ or experience, seven out of ten women in India aged between 25 to 35 are engaged solely in full-time unpaid housework, and 66% of an Indian woman’s labour is unpaid.

First published in Women's Web

Is Bismah Maroof Bringing Her Baby To The World Cup Really A Statement Of Gender Empowerment?

 [While praising Bismah Maroof for bringing her baby on tour, gender stereotypes are actually being reinforced. It's assumed that as the mother she is the primary parent, something we never assume for male sportspersons. First published in Women's Web]

Photographs of the Pakistani cricket captain Bismah Maroof arriving in New Zealand for the ICC Women’s World Cup with her six month old baby in her arms went viral on social media. People went crazy hailing it as a “powerful picture”, the “best picture of the day” and “powerful statement”. Some even expressed the desire that it be “normalised in sports”.

While one, without reservation, admires Bismah Maroof’s achievement of getting back to competitive sport so soon after pregnancy and childbirth, is the fact that the cricketer had to take her baby on tour with her really the statement of gender empowerment that it is made out to be?

While praising Bismah Maroof for bringing her baby on tour, gender stereotypes are actually being reinforced. It is being implicitly assumed that mother is the primary parent for a child, and that once she gives birth, anything else that a woman might want to do can only be taken up after fulfilling her role as a mother. This has always been the case at least in the subcontinent, and what she has done is merely in keeping with the old patriarchal traditions.

Playing international cricket, especially as captain is a full-time job. You have to practice for long hours, lead strategy sessions, play matches, give post-match press conferences and provide moral support to the rest of the team. To do all that, and also be a caregiver for a child is to demand too much from anyone. And that is exactly what Bismah Maroof will be forced to do.

In an ideal relationship, parenting will be gender agnostic. It would be a responsibility shared equally by both parents, and at any point, the one who is better placed to be the primary caregiver will take on that responsibility. In such a relationship, either the child would have been left home with the father, or if she is still breastfeeding, the father would accompany the baby, and be accountable for its well being. Here, however, the father is conspicuous by his absence, and it is Bismah Maroof and her mother who are taking on the entire responsibility of caring for the baby in an unknown location.

This is patently unfair on her. It is not the duty of the mother to take sole responsibility for parenting. While biology dictates that pregnancy and childbearing is the sole prerogative of women, child rearing is merely a role thrust on women by society. By expecting the women to be the primary caregiver, the father is effectively being let off the hook, which he should not be. It is his child also.

While praising Bismah Maroof, people are hailing her as someone who “has it all”- a woman who is leading her national cricket team, without compromising on her responsibilities as a mother. But does she really “have it all”? By praising her for being a hands on mother, she has effectively been guilt tripped into taking on much more than her fair share of the burden.

Let us try to gender reversal. Imagine MS Dhoni taking his daughter to a world cup tournament, without the mother of the child accompanying them. Imagine him gently rocking the child to sleep while explaining batting strategies to the team. Imagine him fielding, with half his mind on the child and whether she can wait a little longer to have her meal. Imagine him spending the lunch and tea break coaxing the child to eat something. Imagine him not partying or socialising with his teammates because he needs to give his child a bath, read a bedtime story and put her to bed. Imagine him waking up a couple of times at night because the child was restless, and yet waking up early in the morning to go to the nets for practice.

We struggle to imagine any of this. We know that even if his family accompanies him on tour, it is the mother who looks after the child while the father plays cricket, and all he does is occasionally play with the child and maybe carry her with him while going out for the toss.

Why then do we presume that there is nothing wrong in the mother being the primary caregiver for her child? When no male sportsperson at the international level has ever taken a child with him to a tournament without the presence of the mother, why do we take it for granted that a mother who wants to continue to play cricket will take the child along on tours?

Much has been made of the fact that she has often and publicly thanked her husband and his family for “supporting her ambition” to play cricket for the nation. But what is the nature of “support” that she has really got when neither her husband nor anyone from his family thought it fit to accompany her on tour to look after the child?

This can only be understood as a phenomenon unique to the subcontinent where a woman is conditioned into thinking that the sole responsibility of caregiving vests with her, and she is not supposed to work outside the home. If her husband and his family “allow” her to work outside the home without doing anything to reduce her workload at home, she should remain eternally grateful for the concession. Women in that position do everything it takes to ensure that there is no room for any complaints on the caregiving and housekeeping front, since that is the price that is to be paid for being allowed to work.

Yes, Bismah Maroof is lucky that she was granted maternity leave, and the Board allowed her to bring her mother and daughter along to the tournament.

But that throws up a different question- what if her employer was not supportive? Would her husband and his family have taken on the full burden of caregiving so she could leave the child at home and go on tour?

Most unlikely. In all probability, she would have either delayed having the child, or given up her job. Is this even something a man would consider? Becoming a parent doesn’t disrupt their lives as it does the lives of the women.

While we can, and must, hail Bismah Maroof for bringing her six month old baby on tour, we must also recognise the fact that this incident shines light on the fact that we in the subcontinent have a very long way to go before we achieve gender parity within the family. Child rearing is gender agnostic. Fathers should take on an equal share of parenting.

Book Review: On Balance, An Autobiography

We are what we are because of the many women who opened doors and left them ajar for us. Leila Seth is one such woman. I knew she had been a practicing lawyer, the first female judge to be appointed to the Delhi High Court judge and the first woman to be the Chief Justice of a High Court. I also knew her as a woman who stood up for LGBTQ rights, and who wrote a beautiful book for children introducing them to the Constitution. I picked up "On Balance, An Autobiography" because I was curious to know the lady behind those accomplishments. And I was delighted.

In a lot of ways, Leila Seth reminds me of so many women of her generation that I know. Women like my mother and grandmother who kept perfect homes. Women like my grandmother who ran households which straddled joint family sensibilities with nuclear family constraints. Women who took the hard decision to send their children to boarding school so their studies would not be interrupted.

What makes Leila Seth extra special was that she did all of that and also was extremely successful professionally. How she landed up studying and practicing law seems almost serendipitous, but once she qualified, it was clearly her grit and knowledge that got her to scale the professional peaks that she did. Like many other women of her (and subsequent) generations, she followed her husband around, till they (like many other couples) took the decision to settle in a city of their choice. She did it with grace, even though it meant virtually starting afresh each time.

Reading the book through the prism of today, you notice the emotional burden she carried throughout her life. Despite her qualifications and her success, she is the one who silently does the things she would have been expected to do if she had not been working. The only time she speaks of that is in the poignant passage on her time as Chief Justice in the Shimla High Court where she says that for the first time ever she was living for herself. That passage more than anything else, sends out a strong message that this emotional burden is something that should be acknowledged, because only after acknowledging it can we work towards changing it.

As someone who grew up in small towns in Eastern India, I loved the description of her life in Darjeeling and her pen portrait of the many gardens she knew. Her account of her years in Calcutta brought back many pleasant memories. If my mother writes her memoirs, she can pick large chunks out of the book.

Leila Seth is also, as we know, the mother of Vikram Seth, and the protagonist of 'A Suitable Boy' is loosely based on her. A lot of people thought that Latha of the book could have married "better"- that the man she chose was not at all 'a suitable boy'. After reading this autobiography you understand exactly why Premo Seth and only Premo Seth was the "Suitable Boy" for the amazing Leila Seth.

If you like reading a well written autobiographies written in a slightly self deprecating tone; if you are a woman who wants to know and understand the women who paved the way for us; if you love "A Suitable Boy", then this book is for you.

The United Colours of Navratri

 The Navratri Colour Code united women in a tight Sisterhood. It is meant to be celebrated, not imposed.

Twelve years back when I had re-entered the formal workforce after a break, amidst lots of discussion and banter, the “colour code” for Navratri was written out and posted on the office noticeboard. Those were days when I was going through a monochromatic phase, so on the first day, I wore red earrings with my black shirt and indigo jeans. On the second day, feeling festive, I draped a blue stole over my white shirt and faded jeans. The next day when I had to go to office, the colour was ‘cyan’, and since I happened to have a dressy cyan and purple kurta, that’s what I wore. On the way to work, I noticed something strange- almost all the women in my railway carriage were in cyan. Thinking back, I realised that most of the women had been in red and blue the previous two days too, but since they were common festive colours I hadn’t noticed. But cyan? An entire city of women in cyan, when most people don’t even own a single piece of clothing in that colour. That was my first introduction to the famous “Navaratri colour code”.

When I asked, I was told that a different manifestation of the goddess was worshipped on each day, and the colour was dedicated to her. For the next couple of years, I worked out of a home office, so the Navratri colour code was something I was only vaguely aware of, but I did notice something strange. The order in which the Goddesses were worshipped remained the same, but the order of colours changed from year to year. Clearly, the colours were not associated with the Goddesses!

Then someone then told me that the colours were decided by the Nakshatrams, but even that didn’t explain why some colours remained constant year on year, but others changed. What was also not explained was why the order of colours was never the same. Finally, I realised that even people who have been participating in the Navratri Colour Code for years have no clue where the colours came from, so I took to google to seek answers.

The mystery was finally solved. There is no religious significance to the colours. The Maharashtra Times first introduced the Navratri colour code in order to engage with the female readers and boost their circulation figures. The Navratri colour code proved to be so popular, it spread across the state, and through saree pacts spread across the nation and even abroad. Navratri Check out the popularity of Instagram or Facebook and you see how people plan their wardrobe well in advance so they can be a part of the global “Navratri colours” hashtags.

But what are these colours? Do they have any significance?

They do. The days of the week are named after the Sun, the Moon and five planets, each of which is associated with a particular colour. These are the colours that form the base of the Navratri Colour Code.

Once you know this, cracking the colour code become easy. In fact, there are many women who follow the colour code even otherwise. My grandmother, for instance, always wore red on Tuesday and black or blue on Saturday. It was something she did as a matter of course.

But hang on, what about pink and purple. Cyan, peacock green and sky blue. Where did they come from?

Good question, simple answer.

Once the first seven colours are allocated, the other two slots are determined by the person who finalises the code every year. Maybe she has a purple saree she wants to drape?

Why then is it so popular?

The Navratri colour code is popular because it is fun. Participating in the trend is a way to assert your individuality while submerging in a collective. It symbolisers Sisterhood. Whether you are the CEO or the lady cleaning her room, you were in the same colour. I have had colleagues remove their black burqas in office to reveal Navratri colours- it was a social celebration, not a religious one.

But now, the colour code is being forcibly implemented. The Senior Management of a PSU bank not only made it mandatory that all employees and vendor partners conform to the Navratri colour code, they threatened punitive action against those that did not. The circular even specified that the colour of the day should be the base colour of the outfit to be considered. While any organization is within its rights to specify and implement a dress codes, they cannot impose a custom that is religious in nature. Thankfully, it was withdrawn after public outcry, but it is a sign of a country that is moving far away from it’s secular tradition.

What is more ironicay is that the colour code which is being implemented by threatening punitive action against who do not confirm is of questionable significance. India is a pluralistic country. We have a wide diversity of customs and traditions. To impose homogeneity is to go against the ethos of the country. And that is extremely disturbing.

As for me, I did dress according to the colour code this Navratri as I have for many previous Navratris. But I did it my way. Once the seven days were completed, I circled back with yellow and green which are the ‘official’ colours of the day. My grandmother would certainly approve.

And hence we celebrate...

Priya Ramani is someone most women professionals of a certain age can identify with.

What happened with her when a senior journalist took her into his hotel room to conduct an interview was the kind of thing that happened to many of us. It was something that made her deeply uncomfortable, yet she stayed silent because thought she was uncomfortable, he didn’t “do anything”.

Most of us have had similar encounters in our career.

Not an overt demand for sexual favours in return for professional growth (or to avoid potential professional death), but situations where the intent is made quite clear. We were uncomfortable, but we chose silence. And we did so for many reasons.

We chose silence because they system is so clearly stacked against women, that even other well meaning women would have rushed in to assure us that we were imagining things if we spoke about how we were made to feel. We would have been assured that we should move on since nothing really happened.

We genuinely believed that harassment took only certain very well defined forms. That unless there was deliberate touch in inappropriate places or unless a clear cut proposition had been made, it was not harassment. It took multiple POSH trainings before most of us accepted that the perception of the victim was as valid as the intent of the perpetrator. That if something made us uncomfortable, we had the right to speak up against it.

We chose silence because of the people we were up against. The men who made us feel uncomfortable were powerful people who could destroy careers. They were also part of a cabal that would brand you as attention seeking- “he can have anyone, why would he waste his energy on you?” They were men who knew that their network would stand by them, and help them destroy any woman who complained.

We chose silence because we subconsciously knew that if we spoke up, we would be put on trial not the perpetrator. And we were right in that perception. When Priya Ramani spoke up against her perpetrator, MJ Akbar responded by filing a defamation suit against her- he knew (as we did) that he would get away.

So, when MJ Akbar with his 97 lawyers accused Priya Ramani of defamation, we felt for her because we have remained silent because of the same fear. For us, it was not just Priya Ramani who was on trial, all our hopes and fears were too.

And hence, Priya Ramani’s victory feels like a vindication for all of us. It assures us that even if the perpetrator is not punished, he will not get away with attempting to turn the tables on you. It sends a strong message across that intimidation no longer works.

Yes, it is pathetic that we should be happy for winning a case that should never have been filed in the first place. But even this case, we were not sure of winning.

And hence, we celebrate. We all celebrate. It is a moment of validation for us.