Weighing in on ‘having it all’

Technologies such as BYOD and complete virtual office set ups provide women the opportunity to work anytime, anywhere

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Any successful woman at some given point of time or the other has been asked the question, ‘Do you have it all?’ Though a seemingly harmless question, it pushes the burden of the home and work both squarely on the shoulders of women. Most evolved women have learnt to take such questions with a pinch of salt. ‘Having it all’ is relative and keeps changing according to the dynamics of their own professional and personal lives and today, it would be true to say that women have found a way to ‘make it work’.

A recent Nasscom report shows that women now account for over 30 percent of the total workforce in the IT industry. Organisations and the government of the country have realised how vital women are not only for economic success but also for the progress of the nation. Having said that, it is also true that despite the measures taken by the government to ensure a stronger presence of women in the C-suite, women are still struggling to shatter the glass ceiling. One of the major reasons why women don’t seem to rise in the ranks, it seems, is a greater necessity to find work-life balance.

Unfortunately, corporate India is still quite undecided on its stand on work-life balance and the success of women in the workplace. In fact, it won’t be off the mark to say that often the maternal wall is more difficult, if not almost impossible to scale than the glass ceiling itself. Consider this, out of the many women engineers who graduated in the 1990s from the hallowed portals of the IITs, how many of them have found their space in the C-Suite as compared to their male counterparts? More often than not, women often have to rethink their career goals and often change the complete trajectory in order to find professional success.

The key findings of Census 2011 reveal that the level of women education has witnessed a steep rise between 2001 and 2011 with an increase of 116 percent in the number of graduates and a 151 percent increase in the number of women completing post-graduation programmes. The number of women earning professional and technical degrees also increased by 196 percent. Today there are over 20 lakh women engineers in the country who despite having the right qualifications and work experience find it hard to break into the proverbial Boys Club.

However, some women, such as Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw of Biocon, Ashwini Asokan, co-founder of Mad Street Den, Kanika Tekriwal, founder of JetSetGo, to name a few, have decided to carve their own destiny by jumping ship. Instead of looking for security in the comfort of a corporate job, these women have taken the entrepreneurial plunge to realise their professional dream and also manage their personal lives well. For these women, and many like them, it’s not one above the other; it’s not one ‘or’ the other—it’s both. Women today are in a mind space where they want to create their own opportunity and push the limits of professional success, and that too at their own terms.

So, how are these women pushing the ‘having it all’ envelop? First of all, there has been a great shift in the social expectations from women. Apart from this, technological advancements and a more gender-neutral business environment, support from venture capitalists and angel investors provide women the additional bandwidth they need to increase their share of professional participation. Technologies such as BYOD and complete virtual office set-ups provide women the opportunity to work anytime, anywhere. Time and performance management softwares help with workforce analytics that assist these entrepreneurs to effectively manage the entire workforce minus the pressing need of face time.

By looking at entrepreneurship driven women can thus create a conducive environment for themselves where they can decide how and when they work. It is also a fact that more professional success also will provide women with greater economic independence to delegate jobs and responsibilities. Be it getting more help to manage the housework or a designated nanny or a great day care centre to share childcare responsibilities, greater economic  potential does make life a little easier for a financially successful woman.  Additionally it also helps in the larger picture by creating work environments for other women where work and life don’t have to be an either/or option.

Women who dive into entrepreneurship know that a company cannot survive on talent alone and are more than willing to put in the proverbial 80 hour work weeks. The only difference here is that when they are running their own company, they get to decide which 80 hours they work.

- By Shirish Deodhar, CEO & Co-Founder, Sapience Analytics

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.