Speaking for women is not so easy. I felt the heat on that day when I spoke about the challenges faced by women at work at the IWD event by WTM in 2017
2. WTM 2014
Women Techmakers event - 2014 - I was 33 then. I feel ashamed to
admit that until then, I was not fully convinced about why we need a
special event for women. I still had that question in me - would
communities for women bring in a gender based divide in the
society?
Last three years made me realise:
(a) The beauty of the word - inclusivity
(b) The meaning of the word - privilege
(c) The importance of forums & communities for women
- Special thanks to Farish and Jinu
3. - Why this topic?
- As someone who gained from this community, I believe it is
my responsibility to give back to the community.
4. Why this topic… (continuation)
- Acknowledging the problem is important to ensure that this is solved.
- Women are conditioned to impose lot of expectations about themselves
- Realising that the problem is not because of your fault and that you are facing them because of the
expectations the society has set on us -- help us feel relieved.
- What will I be covering today?
Listing down some of the common challenges that prevent women from having a steady
career or career growth.
5. Intro to today’s topic -
Challenges faced by women at work
Credits: Anupama
Aanamangad’s video
6. Challenges
- Equal Pay
- Eg: these days we see women in petrol bunks
- Teaching career
- Women prefer these jobs.
- Why is that we don’t see men in these fields in private sector
now?
- IT industry - we see lot of companies which says we hire
experienced women mainly because we believe in empowering
women or maintaining gender ratio.
- Take a look at their maternity leave policies or the data of how many
have availed maternity leaves to ensure that their real intention is
women empowerment.
7. Challenges
- Unfriendly HR policies
- Women with a career break rejoins a job back at a
lower pay and lower designation. This slows down
her career growth.
- Resources with career breaks are not even
considered for a post in several companies
8. Challenges
- “Petty” egos
- (sexism(?))
- As a woman you are constantly being judged
- What appears petty issues otherwise, can
however affect your career growth.
-
- How you look, the tone of your voice - based on
all these, you can be stamped as someone with
“attitude issues”. She thus scores less in her
rating.
-
- While an aggressive male is many a times
considered as someone with “leadership quality”,
a female with an “assertive tone” is considered as
dominating.
Believe it or not,
There are men who cannot report to a female manager!
9. Challenges
- Bias in deciding the designations and
promotions
- Considering all the other factors are equal & there are two
people contesting for the same post, the chances are that the
male will easily fill the position.
The assumptions made to let go a woman candidate:
(a) She might have a baby
(b) She might have a second baby
(c) She might start focusing on the kid’s studies
10. Challenges
- The stress we go through because of the
way we are conditioned
The guilt factors & the stress induced in us:
(a) If we send our kids to a day care.
(b) If we don’t cook
(c) If we don’t get to spend time with your spouse
(d) If we don’t put efforts to look presentable
(e) Paying extra to your domestic help
(f) Paying extra for your commute so that you are not tired at the
end of the day
11. Challenges
- The race (with men, who are privileged)
Usually working women have families and mostly she is the sole one
responsible for the household chores.
9 to 6 - if you work & put your best efforts and finish your work - that is
just not enough. If you are just as good as any male member, that is not
enough. You need to surpass every male member in the team who
works day in day out to ensure that you are recognized.
12. Challenges
- Impostor syndrome
- Many of us have this problem
- We believe that Everyone else can do it, but not
me.. I am not the right fit here...
- “I can’t talk”
- “I can’t do management jobs”
- “I can’t do coding jobs”
- Others can.. Because they are..
- I simply don’t deserve to be here..
- (New topic for me. Wanted to cover it here.
Worth reading on this topic to help yourself come
out of this in case you have).
-
- Very common among programming. Lot of
women feel that I cannot code.
13. Challenges
- Sexual harassment at work
- This topic deserves to be treated as separate
topic by itself. Because of the vastness, I am not
discussing it today. At the same time, I cannot just
miss out listing this topic here.
14. “If a woman is doing things differently, she is paving all of us a way to lead a life of our own choices.”
We have seen this - Nurses - night shifts, primary bread winners.. First category of working women,
probably
15. Remembering Anila Balakrishnan & her blog post about the timings in Ladies hostel - 2010. I was unable to
conceive what she was hinting at. First such post I ever read. (It is because of such women who paved us the
ways, people like me are now able to express our feelings without any doubt in these kind of forums. I would like
to thank Anila & other women like her for leading the way.)
