A wish on Women's day

8th March is International Women's Day. There have been a lot of emails, activities, events planned across companies for this day. Email greetings for the women in the organization, roses from colleagues, wearing sarees to celebrate are just some examples.

As per Wikipedia, the first Women's Day found its origin in the Socialist Party of America in the first decade of the 1900's and has since evolved in different countries - the focus of the celebrations ranges from general celebration of respect, appreciation and love towards women to a celebration for women's economic, political and social achievements.

All this leads me to wonder, do we need a Special Men's Day - why are we not celebrating their existence or their achievements? Is it because women were not expected to achieve anything in the first place and have take the men by surprise or is the world ridding itself of its guilt by making up for lost time in being generally nice and respectful to women on this day..?

Call me a cynic but won't it be nice if we didn't need a special day to celebrate Women..if the world was without prejudice on the basis of gender, our streets were safe to walk at any time, wearing anything we want, men and women 'shared' the guilt for going to work and leaving their children behind, we would stop using terms like 'career woman' for the working females (have you ever heard of a career man?), our mothers would eat with our fathers instead of feeding them first...

The world is changing and hopefully into a better place...women are definitely in a better place today and have more choices in life. But we have a long way to go...

Women in Leadership

'Women at the workplace’ has been the subject of debate and discussion for many years now. Over time, women have evolved to play an increasingly important role in the corporate world and in the overall professional workspace. However, at leadership positions and senior management levels, they remain a minority.

Is this driven purely by perception around women and their personal and professional aspirations or is it actually a reality for women and their careers as they balance that with the other priorities in their life.

Women traditionally have been perceived as ‘spenders’ and not creators of wealth – is there merit then in reviewing this situation now in the context of the corporate world and is there statistics to prove it? The above was the theme of the 5^th Annual WILL Forum Conference held recently in Mumbai which I attended. This forum has been set up to promote balanced leadership in the corporate sector and the key theme of this conference was also to review if indeed there is a business case for the same. It also emphasises the need to move away from anecdotal evidence of the value that women bring to business to a more compelling business argument backed up by statistical and economic data.  The WILL forum in coordination with KPMG conducted recently a study to this effect which threw up some interesting statistics and findings:

• It was found that of the senior business leaders surveyed, while 80% of them agree that investing in women is critical to improving revenues and bottom line, less than 5% of the employee development budgets are actually invested in women in the organization.
• Typically gender specific attributes identified (in the WILL KPMG report) as being characteristic of the leadership style of women include among others, empathetic listening, trust based relationships, inclusive behavior, transparency and rational decision making. These attributes potentially deliver value in specific business functions like, among others:
  Ø Strategy and Planning
  Ø Brand Management
  Ø Talent Development
  Ø Finance
• To be able to leverage these attributes, the investment that companies make in their women employees can be broadly categorized into:
  · Intellectual – Enhancing skills and knowledge
  · Experiential – Improving overall experience
  · Sustenance – Prolonging tenure in the organization
  · Physical – Tangible benefits and steps

It was also found that typically companies focus on sustenance and physical investments while the 1^st two require more focus especially to increase women in leadership positions

The benefits of investing in women are also known to improve company loyalty, reduce attrition, enhance project and people management skills and eventually improve brand image– which is critical in today’s competitive marketplace.

 

According to the World Bank, investing in women is ‘smart economics’ – yet women account for only 1% of the world’s repository of wealth, 10% of global income and 14% of the leadership positions in both the private and public sectors. Certainly the landscape is changing. But it is probably time for pro-active interventions than simply affirmative action.

Internal hiring complete....ready to be hired

After much deliberation and debate the decision to return to work has finally been taken, the job offer is in hand and the dates of joining finalized...

But none of the above is possible without putting in place the internal hiring process at home. I can now offer free (maybe unwanted!) advice to any mum returning to work after a long sabbatical especially in Mumbai. Here goes:

1. Smooth talk your driver into extending his work hours. Ask about his children, wife and mother for three weeks prior to the smooth talking. Eventually he will cave - ofcourse he will ask for a 30 % raise and you will give it. Its the only way you can decide to work in a location 30 kms from your home which will take 1 hour to reach in summer and 1.5-infinite hours in the monsoons...

2. Improve relations with your neighbours and friends - they are going to be your new family and will take care of your child while you are away - unless you are the fortunate few who have parents / in-laws close by who are willing to put their lives on hold to take care of your children

3. Enroll your child in physically and mentally stimulating activities and classes that he likes....please do not force your opinion on your child...thats the least you can do if you are leaving him behind for atleast 10 hours (as you will notice time and again, it is really gnawing at me right now)

4. And finally, the most important of them all, hire a great nanny...I just made that hire yesterday...its probably too soon to tell but I live in hope...

Clearly a large part of what I earn is going to be spent in maintaining some level of status quo in our lives...small price to pay for renewed contact with the corporate world, conversation with adults and higher intellectual stimulation!!

Fashionably cultural or culturally fashionable ?

A lot of weekends these days are spent in trying to find and execute 'quality' activities for children to do or be exposed to...alas I have fallen prey to it more than often...

This weekend was no different...the promise of a puppet show on the lines of Elmo from Sesame Street, a workshop on puppet making afterwards and then grab some lunch along the way....out of the three, I think the only one that was achieved with any success was lunch !

The venue was perfect - my favourite book shop in town...but unfortunately, the teeming millions who live in Mumbai seem to all think alike so the puppet show was bursting at its seams with a variety of children - wailing, excited, over-dosed on sugar, zapped-out-their-wits et al...the parents dont help either. There should be a list of clear do's and dont's for the parents too:

a) If your child is not interested, dont force him
b) Stop your child from hitting other children
c) Stop talking while the puppets are talking

In addition, the ' puppet making workshop' afterwards ended up meaning sticking some tennis balls on a sock...while most kids were excited for precisely half a second, I know that that sock will now live in a drawer for the rest of its life and never see daylight again...

It was actually more enjoyable and probably more mentally stimulating too for my child to just browse through the entire childrens library, read and be read to and spend some quiet time in the company of books. 

Has the time come?

For the last few weeks, I have been debating that endless debate in my mind...Is it time for me to finally get back to work? 

There have been multiple triggers for this debate - a sudden deluge of placement consultants sending linkedin requests, part-time jobs becoming available in the standard 'corporate' space, my friends getting back to work before I have even thought about it, the desire to make money again and the fact that my kid is now in 'big' school.

There are ofcourse pros and cons of both options but that just makes it harder to decide....there are so many positives of getting back:

• more money in the household - maybe we can finally afford a house in this maximum city (see how money figures as the top reason!)
• my mind will get that intellectual stimulation it so craves presently
• probably my self-confidence will get a boost....maybe its just me but when some of my old college friends ask me, "What are you doing these days?"...I am almost afraid to admit and say I am a full time wife and mother...
• my son will probably get less clingy and weepy if I am 3 minutes late in getting to his school for the sports day

But then again it is so hard to let go of habits formed over 4 years...getting back to work will probably mean:

• my house will no longer run on the clockwork precision that it does now...
• the freedom to step out and do things I want will go - after all you cannot visit an art exhibition during office hours...
• my son might get more clingy and weepy if I am 3 minutes late in getting to his school for the sports day - its hard to let go and hand over your baby to a nanny ....she clearly is not good enough for him !!

oh decisions decisions...doubt if it will be sorted in a hurry...

Role reversal

Last night, at our writers club there was an interesting discussion on role reversal - we had to visualise and write down a situation where traditional roles were reversed - maybe if the boss asks for a raise from the subordinate, husband takes over core domestic responsibilities etc...

Interestingly the first thing that came to my mind was the role reversal with my domestic help - maybe her threats to leave had left a deeper impact than I thought they would...the situation would probably be something like this...here goes:

Today when the maid came in through the door, I forgot to say "Namaste". That was the start of an awful day because nothing I did seemed correct to her and nothing I said sounded polite enough...When I got down to cooking she really took off on me. She pointed out that I had forgotten to add salt to the daal, when I made chappatis, she said I used too much flour, when I washed up the utensils, she said I used too much soap, when I washed the bottles, she said I used too little soap!

But the worst was yet to come. When my 4 year old was back from school, she noticed that as usual, I forgot to wash his hands properly. That really set her off...I got a 20 minute lecture on hygiene and health from her...

I do hope tomorrow is a better day and that my work satisfies her because I really want 2 days off this weekend and I dont want to do any housework and I know she is not going to like it. Gosh I do hate her sometimes ....

15 Years to perform poorly !

Read recently that as per the adminstrative "reforms" in light of the whole Anna Hazare anti-corruption movement, the bureaucracy is finally being made accountable for its performance.

While the effort itself is laudable, but unlike the private sector where reviews are, at the minimum, annual and more often than not bi-annual, here the risk of losing your jobs arises only after 15 years of potential underperformance !!

Its truly unbelievable that the minimum number of years the government employees across IAS, IPS, IRS, Customs, excise et al have no accountability for the work that they do is 15 long years. While they would, I am sure (and hope), have annual reports and reviews of the work that they do, but unlike the private sector where it is pretty much 'move up' or 'move out' here it is 'move up' or 'move ON' to another year of mediocrity till finally 15 years later they might be held accountable...

Maybe the need for administrative reform would not have arisen in the first place had the accountability been measured regularly, goals set annually and most importantly political support provided timely and without any mal-intent...