Active Stocks
Tue Mar 19 2024 12:31:04
  1. Tata Consultancy Services share price
  2. 4,019.25 -3.03%
  1. Tata Steel share price
  2. 149.45 -0.10%
  1. Bharti Airtel share price
  2. 1,233.85 0.72%
  1. Power Grid Corporation Of India share price
  2. 259.85 -1.94%
  1. ITC share price
  2. 409.80 -1.82%
Business News/ Opinion / More than just a glass ceiling
BackBack

More than just a glass ceiling

More than just a glass ceiling

Illustration: Jayachandran/MintPremium

Illustration: Jayachandran/Mint

We underestimate the role that gender conditioning plays in our lives, and it’s not just in India. American psychologists opine that if men are worried about failure, women are worried about success. Women the world over worry about how success will alter their equations with family, their marriage or boyfriend prospects, and about whether doing a “man’s job" in a “man’s world" will alter their personality in some irrevocable, unattractive way.

Most of the Indian women we know, even in Gen Next, have grown up with subliminal messages about being a “good girl", that is, of behaving in a manner that conforms to society’s stereotypes and prescriptions of what success for a girl looks like. A venerable aunt used to hold up as an example worth emulating a girl who had a PhD in nuclear physics and an amazing job, but “when she walked into the room you would never know that—she was so simple and ordinary in everything she did and said". It took many years before we picked up the courage to ask, “But if she was so accomplished, what was the matter with her that she made no waves?"

If you are from a middle-class family in Tamil Nadu, as one of us is, you have probably been raised with a variety of wheedling voices asking you to behave in a particular manner and be a chamatta ponnu. (The English translation of this, loosely, is “good girl", but it doesn’t even begin to describe the tough code of conduct and gender conformity that these two Tamil words demand and command.) The same expression, when used for a boy, usually takes on the approving tone of “smart boy", with no hidden messages and coded expectations.

Illustration: Jayachandran/Mint

We wonder if these phrases, and all the loaded cultural conditioning embedded in them, have been so programmed into our brains that even in the workplace, women strive to do their best, not upset the status quo and be chamatta ponnus’/shahani mulgis’/bangaaru thallis’ equivalents. We fear, based on several anecdotal data points, that even when women get to heights after arduous ladder climbing on our own steam, they don’t feel as entitled as they ought to feel, in order to be able to unabashedly wield the power they have, to change things that no one else wants to change.

Worse still, we wonder if there is a new stereotype of the successful working woman that is being constructed that many of us are striving to live up to. This new stereotype is the office version of the super homemaker—one who is brainy and well qualified, and who does a spectacular job, but within the boundaries of a pre-existing sandbox; who understands the limits of vive la difference when it comes to perspectives and views related to a range of fundamental issues. In short, one who does not question the fundamentals, and takes care to not rock the boat of man-made rules of how things ought to be done in the workplace.

This would indeed be a pyrrhic victory for the cause of women, because the whole point of having women in the workplace is that they can bring in diverse new perspectives and leadership styles, and drive definitive and positive change on the way “we usually do things around here". The discussion on gender in the workplace, for women who are already in the mainstream, no matter at what level, is not about how many of us shatter the glass ceiling—it is about what we do during our journey there and beyond, and whether we bring different paradigms to the world of work and different agendas, too. After all, we do represent another world, and another kind of mind-wiring and power-wielding.

This issue becomes clearer when we look at it in another context—why is women’s reservation in legislatures such a big deal for women? Not because men have “at last" agreed to share power or because, now, some more women will storm the bastion. But because we hope that the lens through which government views society and its needs of growth and development, justice and fair play, will become more wide-angled and bring the less visible 50% of the population into sharp focus, too.

Rama Bijapurkar is a market strategy consultant and Chandra Iyengar is a senior civil servant. Your comments are welcome at theirview@livemint.com

Unlock a world of Benefits! From insightful newsletters to real-time stock tracking, breaking news and a personalized newsfeed – it's all here, just a click away! Login Now!

Catch all the Business News, Market News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.
More Less
Published: 07 Mar 2010, 09:07 PM IST
Next Story footLogo
Recommended For You
Switch to the Mint app for fast and personalized news - Get App