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Shakshi Saxena Sharma carries a Swiss knife with her when she is travelling within the capital city.
The 26-year-old, like many working women across the country, is worried about her security, particularly when commuting or going out at night. The tussle with safety is one of the key reasons why many working women quit their jobs.
But carrying that knife just boosts Sharma’s confidence manifold.
Today, she works as a senior analyst with IT services firm Genpact, auditing travel and other related expenses for clients.
This is her second job after graduating from college—she completed a course in business administration (MBA), specializing in marketing and finance. Soon after, she joined a banking and financial services company. But this was early 2020 and the pandemic soon changed lives and how we work.
Sharma’s job as a fund manager for high net-worth individuals did not go as planned. And this tells us about the early work life struggles of many women.
“Few months into the pandemic, we were told to start cross-selling other products. We had to visit client homes,” Sharma said.
“I was uncomfortable. And I could imagine the plight of my other women colleagues who came from other cities—they did not know Delhi very well and had to meet clients whenever they were available,” she added.
We had to visit client homes. I was uncomfortable.
—Shakshi Saxena Sharma
This was a task that was a natural advantage for the men in the office. “The boys met their targets. They would seek out more client meetings while the women in the office had to figure out ways of not visiting client homes,” she said.
When a colleague raised this issue, the company’s senior leaders said those who didn’t comply would miss their targets, which would impact their appraisals.
Sharma quit the company in 2021 and was brutal during the exit interview. “The lack of transparency needs to be discussed,” she told her manager, adding that she won’t work in a place that is low on this measure.
The IT services industry, for decades, has been considered a good place for women to work. The industry is quick to adopt best practices.
Things changed when she joined Genpact in August 2021.
The IT services industry, for decades, has been considered a good place for women to work. The industry is quick to adopt best practices from around the world and sets new benchmarks for other sectors to follow.
Sharma immediately noticed a difference in the working culture. After office gatherings in the evenings, seniors in the office checked if women colleagues reached home safely. The company also gave her more ease of working.
Married in 2022 to an army officer, she informed her boss that she needs flexible working options. The company readily agreed.
Sharma comes across as rather confident. She has a clear vision and goal for what’s next. “I want to become a senior manager in the next five years,” she said.
Why Alisha likes Ghazal
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For Alisha Anand, her 20s were easy and fun. But the 30s are proving to be challenging. Now 36, she is juggling motherhood and a career switch—Anand has started a business.
Her professional journey began nearly two decades ago when she decided to become a radio jockey with Radio One—94.3 FM. Promotions came easily, she recalled, “with my seniors taking interest in my work and new roles and responsibilities coming my way effortlessly.”
But over time, she decided to switch careers and moved to content marketing in order to grow her scope of work. Anand worked with a few digital agencies, before becoming a consultant with a well-known advisory firm. Here, she handled challenging and time-consuming projects. However, the pandemic changed her in some ways. She now wanted a better balance, between life and work.
Last year, Anand decided to pursue entrepreneurship. She set up a digital marketing agency. “My ambition has always been strong,” she explained, “and I needed to find a way to spend time with my son while continuing with my career.”
This decision allows her to work from home, minimizing time spent in the office.
I had to find a way to spend time with my son while continuing with my career.
—Alisha Anand
The fact is that motherhood and work can prove difficult for women in India. After Anand became a mother in 2020, she found managing expectations of working long hours rather tough.
She said that workplace bias against new mothers is a reality and employers need to be more accommodating while allowing such employees to resume work.
Workplace bias against new mothers is a reality and employers need to be more accommodating while allowing such employees to resume work.
The additional work of providing childcare often prompts many women to step back or scale back their scope of work.
India’s current female labour force participation rate (FLFPR) stands at 37%.
While the number has improved over the years, it is still low. More recently, several measures to improve female participation in the workforce have been proposed or enforced.
The Code on Social Security, 2020, proposed enhancement in paid maternity leave from 12 weeks to 26 weeks.
But laws can’t change societal biases—not overnight. In such a situation, Anand said she seeks inspiration from several female entrepreneurs re-shaping the start-up community in India.
For instance, Ghazal Alagh, the co-founder of Honasa Consumer, which sells personal care products under the Mama Earth brand.
Alagh, a mother of two children, has played a significant role in the company’s growth—it listed on the stock exchanges last year. This sort of a story resonates deeply with Anand.
She also routinely watches episodes of Shark Tank India, listening keenly to pitches from young entrepreneurs. Stories of women starting out small businesses are of particular interest to her.
Questions they asked Rohini
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From the time Rohini Haldea decided to return to a full-time job in 2016, after a six-year personal break, it took her around nine months to be employed again. She joined VF Brands, an apparel retail company in Bengaluru.
Returning to work after a long break is tough; the interviews are tougher. In every job interview, she was asked similar questions: Why did you take a break? Are you sure about working again? Will you be able to travel? Will you be able to cope up?
“Breaking that barrier took some time. It hasn’t held me back after that,” she said.
Haldea, 47, is currently an assistant vice-president and marketing head at Lifestyle International, a retail company. That’s a national role.
Besides driving marketing initiatives for Lifestyle stores and the brand, she also tracks how the Indian consumer is changing. She heads a team where there are many women.
How exactly is she to work with? And where has she learnt the ropes on leadership?
If you have to move to the next level, you need to develop your skill sets and solve problems.
—Rohini Haldea
Before her long break from work, Haldea worked with Hindustan Unilever, India’s largest fast-moving consumer goods company, for 11 years.
Learnings from the company may have helped. She has never been a big reader of books on leadership, she said. So, when it came to managing a team, she looked back at some of her male colleagues who were great managers and learnt from how they ran their teams and businesses.
There are a few basic rules she swears by—being accessible, maintaining an open door policy, and allowing freedom and flexibility to team members.
As the impact of the pandemic waned, most companies started calling their employees back to office. However, Haldea said she is still open to giving her team members flexibility of when and where they want to work from. “You have to trust people to do their jobs,” she said.
Women leaders, in general, do a better job at being available to their teams, she further said.
“I believe in hiring and training well. I tell my team what we need to achieve and want them to come back and tell me how it can be done. If you have to move to the next level, you need to develop your own skill sets and solve problems. It applies to women and men,” Haldea said.
Women leaders, in general, do a better job at being available to their teams.
As workplaces get more competitive, are there instances of missed opportunities as a woman?
Haldea says she can’t recall being denied an opportunity in any of the companies she worked in.
“I am sure it exists. For me, I have been to the best colleges (she completed her post-graduate diploma in management from the Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore) and started my career with Unilever. I made all the choices but I never felt I was held back because I am a woman,” she said.
Arundhati’s Lucknow diary
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In 2006, Arundhati Bhattacharya was posted in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, as a general manager with the State Bank of India (SBI), India’s largest bank. But she was unsure of accepting the position when first offered—her daughter’s schooling could have been disrupted. Bhattacharya reached out to one of her mentors, M.S. Verma, a former chairman of the bank.
Giving up a job takes just about 30 seconds, but building it takes a lifetime. So, don’t take it lightly, Verma told her. “It (giving up your job) should be the absolute last option after you’ve tried out everything. And if you’ve not tried out everything, then you know you’re not being fair to yourself,” she recounted the mentor telling her.
Bhattacharya is now 67. In the past decades, she has broken many barriers, seen through many institutional biases, and pushed ahead. And there were times when she didn’t know what to do—the Lucknow posting was one of them. Having good mentors help, the chairperson and CEO of Salesforce India and the former chairperson of SBI, said.
Working in a different city implies personal sacrifices and possibly, time away from family. That’s a choice many women grapple with.
There were times when I had to prioritize work over family.
—Arundhati Bhattacharya
“There were times when I had to prioritize work over family, but I always tell everyone that these are very personal decisions. Whatever the decision, you must be able to look yourself in the mirror and be okay with it,” Bhattacharya said. “If you prioritize family over work, that’s perfectly fine too”.
Bhattacharya accepts that women face the pressure of guilt when it comes to taking care of the children or elderly parents. This forces many to take a backseat. If they are in a middle to senior management position, it could mean a lot of travel.
Having said that, India Inc. today has better gender diversity compared to when Bhattacharya entered the workforce—in 1977. While this could mean that more women are prioritizing work, Bhattacharya feels some biases are just too ingrained. In fact, she realized that these biases are ingrained in her, too.
Our diversity quotient is far better now but Indian corporates, both from the private and public sectors, have a long way to go.
After a training programme at Salesforce, she had succumbed to asking men and women candidates a different slate of questions.
“For instance, I would ask women about family; I would ask how old the children were; I would ask where they were, and how would she manage in case the job required a lot of travel,” Bhattacharya said. “I was not asking men about travel, about where their children were and how old they were.”
The bottomline: Our diversity quotient is far better now but India and Indian corporates, both from the private and public sectors, have a long way to go.
“A public sector organization will only move forward (on diversity) when there is a mandate to move. In private companies, nobody needs mandates,” she said. “My concern is that there are people in the private sector who are aware. But they refuse to move because they haven’t gotten over their biases.”