The Hindu Business Line : The price of success

THEY are young and vibrant women in their early 20s, with a spring in their step, hope in their hearts and dreams in their eyes. Some want a career in marketing; others a toehold in the hitherto male-dominated area of finance and investment. One wants to be in the entertainment industry, her role model being Ekta Kapoor. "I would love to do what she is doing in the world of entertainment. I think that is the area of the future," says Ms S. Deepti, whose father runs a medical equipment manufacturing facility in Kerala.

She is one of 13 women doing the 18-month PGDM (Post Graduate Diploma in Management) at the IFMR in Chennai. Incidentally, the batch has 25 students; and the women outnumber the men by one!

In an animated chat with them, the thing one registers most is that they are out to shatter all stereotypes. And adding to this feminine power group is the advice of an odd mother here and there.

Take the case of Ms Parimala Rao who hails from Bangalore. The discussion is on female managers having to walk the tightrope between the demands of a high-profile job and her role in managing the home front.

"My mom does not want me to get married. She says every woman gets married and that is the normal thing to do," says Ms Rao. But in the Indian context, relatives and friends will come up with an `alliance' for a daughter who is of `marriageable age'.

"Earlier people used to bring such alliances, but she shouted so much at them that they have now stopped and my mom is thrilled about it," says a smiling Ms Rao.

As for the "space" a woman can manage for herself, she feels her "grandmother had more space in those days, as she was the manager of the house.

She had complete independence and the time to run the house as she wanted. But now a woman who works is expected to do both; manage home and office".

Her father is in the Kannada film industry, but this field is a definite no-no as far as she is concerned. "Cable television has finished this industry and the future does not look so great."

On completing her course, she would like to get into "project finance or equity investment. I would like to head a planning department of a finance company or a bank and design investment projects."

For Ms Sowmya Sundaram of Lucknow, the goal is different. Her father is from the service industry and in 1988-89 "when we wanted to start a small sari business, the troubles we encountered just getting it going made me determined to do an MBA." But after completing her course, she would like to work "for a while in the financial services sector before setting up some business on my own."

Ms Eileen Mary Mathew, Thiruvananthapuram, has graduated in travel and tourism and is happy that more travel agencies are headed by women.

She is doing a project for a corporate major "which is absolutely male-dominated. But they are going to launch a new project related to selling a holiday experience, and when it came time to select a trainee from IFMR, they wanted a woman!"

She bagged the assignment and when she asked why the company preferred women for the project, she was told that "men are not realistic and pitch their targets very high. Women, on the other hand, are more realistic and have better marketing and convincing skills."

Ms Neeta Mohandas comes from a business family in Kerala. Her father exports rice to West Asia, and she has completed B.Com.

Eventually she hopes to join her father's business, but not before she gets some experience in a marketing job, preferably in international marketing.

However, what worries her about women executives is their mindset. She is now training with ABN Amro and finds that though there are enough women in the organisation, including some at the top, "a lot of these women do not have much ambition".

She says that though the women at the second and third rung, and the women at its call centre, are very hard working and talented, "they seem to be interested merely in supplementing their family income rather than building a career. I asked several women at the call centre, `where do you plan to go from here?' and they gave vague replies."

While some said they had not thought about such issues, others said that when the Bank advertised for an opening they would apply. "They did not seem to have any definite plan in their minds on improving their career prospects. I found their male colleagues much more ambitious and this seems to be the trend everywhere."

This made the young student wonder whether it was family responsibilities and the conditioning of their gender role that made the women more casual about their careers.

At this point Ms Sowmya pointed out the example set by women managers in the ICICI and ICICI Bank. "They have done so well and occupy some of the top positions. This should certainly be an inspiration to other women."

Maintaining that once a woman is given an opportunity to prove herself, she really works hard and excels at her job, she described her experience in a Reliance group company in Ahmedabad where she had been a trainee for seven months.

On the first day she was told in no uncertain terms by many men in the office that they "do not entertain women. But at the end of seven months, when I left, they wanted me to stay back and offered me a job.

It took them some time to change their mindset that a woman can work hard, deliver and be an asset to their organisation. But eventually it happened."

She found that the men who were so anti-women when she joined the organisation had a reason for their opinion. "They had earlier employed women who had not delivered; so I suppose they had a point in not wanting to waste their time on any more women. When you join an organisation you have to work hard and deliver; whether you are a man or a woman".

Commenting on the guilt factor that often affects working women because of the time spent at the office and away from their family, Ms Neeta said that there was always an element of sacrifice in most decisions that women made pertaining to their career.

"All major decisions that women make are in consultation with their family. When a man gets an offer or an opportunity to go abroad on an assignment, for a short or long period, he just packs his bag and goes. There is not even a question on whether he should take this opportunity or not.

But when a woman gets a similar opportunity, the whole family has to sit and decide whether she should go or not, and if she does, what will happen to the home."

Against this background of young women reaching for the stars, and joining the general consensus that women should not shy away from ambition, a sobering thought is the price that many women pay for success at the workplace.

The April issue of the Harvard Business Review carries the findings of a disturbing study which runs thus: "Thirty years into the women's movement, female executives still do not have what they want — and probably never will."

The article, Executive women and the myth of having it all, reveals a "painful, well-kept secret; at midlife, between a third and a half of all successful career women in the United States do not have children". And mind you, these women have not chosen to remain childless.

"The vast majority, in fact, yearns for children. Indeed, some have gone to extraordinary lengths to bring a baby into their lives. They subject themselves to complex medical procedures, shell out tens of thousands of dollars, and derail their careers — mostly to no avail, because these efforts come too late."

Ms Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an economist and author of several books, and this study, admits in the article that her findings on the brutal demands of ambitious careers are indeed bleak.

"But they can also be liberating if they spur action. My hope is that they will generate workplace policies that recognise the huge costs to businesses of losing highly educated women when they start families. I hope it will galvanise young women to make newly urgent demands of their partners, employers, and policy makers and thus create more generous life choices for themselves."

(Response can be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in)

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