It is not about stereotypes here, but women with children do faced challenged when off to work; after all, the children do need to be taken care of. Should companies have a role to play here? Yes, say working mothers – and this opinion resonates globally across countries and societies including India, USA and Malaysia. Here are some opinions - would you have any to share?
I would like a day care centre for working mothers within office premises. By the way, this is mandatory for all companies in India according to the labour laws, but no one seems to be adhering to it. - Shweta Kapoor, Sapient, South Korea
DAYCARE!!!!!!!!!!!! This is the one things needs changing in companies. In the US it is ridiculously expensive and not always available. - Soledad Quiroz, Graduate Student at Michigan State University, USA There’s more - Continue Reading
This was not a question I raised, but Juliette Reinders Folmer, a marketing communications consultant from the Netherlands chose to make a point by sharing the following with me. Would you agree? Share your comments.
In my view, women are their own worst enemy when it comes to work. Part of that can be traced to ’social programming’ and culture, but you can break through that.
A (female) ex-colleague of mine once worded it like this: “When men interview for a job and are asked whether they qualify and the job is above their level of experience they will say ‘I can’ while women will say ‘I can learn.’ We need to learn to swallow the ‘learn’ bit.”
So, in short: men are just better at selling themselves. Women all too often underplay their own skills and by doing that place themselves in a worse negotiating position on all levels.
And here’s another take on working with women from Rohini Sharma, another friend working as a teacher in Delhi.
Teachers tend to be mostly women in India, not just in schools but even in other training institutes covering languages, soft skills, voice accent training etc.
Gourmet Talk: Having taught in a language institute myself, I can reflect upon my own experiences of working in an almost all-female work environment. Women get together and you have a potpourri ready. Literally so! Forever wanting to show off their culinary skills women get the most delicious of dishes to work. I got to eat things I had never eaten before. Wait, there’s more. Read on…
Wonder what it is like working in an environment where most of your colleagues are men? I posed this question to some of my friends, and here’s one perspective from a teacher (prefers not to be named) at The British School in New Delhi.
“Working in an almost all-female environment, I would definitely like more male colleagues at work. Foremost reason being that in an all female environment, the women are constantly gossiping, bitching, cribbing – not particularly in that order though! Despite their being constant work pressure, they somehow manage to find the time to indulge in all, or, some of this. With male colleagues, however, one can hope for a more professional and thereby a better work environment.”
What’s you take on it? Write in at ajay@ajayjain.com.
As a woman business networker and entrepreneur in India, Naina Redhu has some interesting insights into networking in India, including those from a woman’s perspective. Click here to read about this on her blog on networking. Her creative design studio, Aside, can be accessed here.
Travelling for work may be tiring, but it certainly does not come in the way of Indian women executives cherry-picking perks like some time to themselves for a bit of self-indulgence, away from bosses at work and kids at home. Here’s what some of them do: Read on…
Conspicuous by their presence at airport lounges are more and more laptop toting women off on a business trip. Usually all by themselves. When it comes to deciding who should travel, the gender divide at companies seems to be nothing more than a blurred line now. What are beyond dispute, however, are the unique set of challenges, especially security concerns, faced by women travelling on business.
Not that any of these are a deterrent, but being safe rather than sorry seems to be the mantra for these women. Continue Reading…
Came across a link to this article in The Economist on Guy Kawasaki’s blog, an insightful and interesting piece no doubt. The first paragraph of the piece reads:
EVEN today in the modern, developed world, surveys show that parents still prefer to have a boy rather than a girl. One longstanding reason why boys have been seen as a greater blessing has been that they are expected to become better economic providers for their parents’ old age. Yet it is time for parents to think again. Girls may now be a better investment.
Click here to read the full piece.
