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| HER WORLD | Sunday, September 16, 2001, Chandigarh, India |
Meenakshi Malhotra WHO makes for more effective managers — men or women? This million-dollar question has been a much-debated matter in the recent past and has led to varying opinions. But one thing is certain, women’s natural work style fits in better with the new kind of emerging jobs. Books after babies is
their agenda Dalit women bear the
triple burden of caste, class and gender They work better in a
team Fighting the mid-age
trap
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Women have the cutting edge as managers
In order to survive and grow in today’s turbulent environment, organisations are making a lot of radical changes. Their structures are becoming flatter, slimmer, and they have many decentralised units with people working in multifunctional teams. They are empowering their teams to take their own decisions within the framework of the organisation’s overall strategic plans. There is a need for constant adaptability in today’s organisations. For such organisations, leaders have to provide vision and a sense of mission, encourage participation, inspire and empower their people. That is why they must display empathy and coach their people. In other words, transformational leaders are the order of the day. Rosener J. conducted a study in the USA covering a variety of organisations, including industry, military, education, and health care. The findings of the study were startling. Men preferred a transactional leadership style that is mainly concerned with exchanging rewards and punishments for performance. They liked to use their organisational position. Women liked to use an interactive style or transformational leadership style. This style created team cohesion, commitment, and boosted organisational morale. In other words, it created a supportive climate for people to give their best. Unlike men, who liked to guard their information, women shared it and tried to arrive at decisions in a more collaborative manner. They accepted their incompetencies and failures, as and when required. This phenomenon has been supported by another study conducted by Bass, B.M. and Avolio, B.J. The researchers had asked the subordinates to rate their managers on leadership style measure. When the data was analysed, it was found that subordinates perceived that women displayed a more transformational leadership behaviour than did the men. Similar studies being carried out in the UK and other countries also prove this point. The situation in organisations demands more women as leaders. Employing women is not easy for any employer. Women play a very vital role at home also. A woman cannot ignore her family members, especially her children. In our country there are no appropriate support systems like creches or day-care centres where children can be taken care of in the absence of their mothers. Thus organisations that want to employ and retain effective women managers have to change their outlook and policies. They have to ensure that women managers working with them are under less stress, so that they can give their best to the organisation. They should not let them burn out. Ways in which organisations can help in reducing the stress levels of their women managers are as follows: a) Providing flexi-time b) Compressed week c) Telecommuting d) Part-time employment e) Job-sharing with one or more people f) Company-sponsored day-care centres Flexi-time allows some variation in the starting and quitting times of the day. This helps the women managers to attend home and office in a better manner. In a compressed week arrangement, women managers don’t have to come to office everyday, they simply work more on the days they attend office. In telecommuting, she does not have to come to office at all. She can work from home only. Part-time employment and job-sharing allow women to spend less time in the office. Decent company-sponsored day-care centres help women to concentrate more on their work in the office, rather than fret about the children. Organisations which wish to retain their women managers shall have to restructure their thinking processes. After doing their cost-benefit analysis, they shall find that it would be in their best interest to take care of their women managers. The message which goes out is loud and clear — if you want the cutting edge, look after your women —in home as well as in your office. (The writer is a Professor
of Management, UBS, PU) |
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Books after babies is their agenda RADHIKA (name changed) met the man of her dreams in school, a few years her senior. And by the time she finished graduating, they were married. And star student Radhika took to marital bliss like a fish to water. She loved staying at home and keeping house. She lived with her in-laws and quickly learnt the ropes from her ma-in-law. Soon, the stork came calling and by the time she was 25, Radhika was a proud mama of a naughty son and a lovely daughter. "Then one evening, as I was walking home from the market, holding my son by the hand and wheeling my daughter in the pram, I spotted this middle-aged lady waiting in the balcony opposite mine," remembers Radhika. "I knew that she was waiting for her husband. She had been doing this for years. Since several years before I got married even." "But that evening, it suddenly hit me between the eyes. Would I be doing the same, once my children grew up and went away? Would I be left alone at home just waiting, after life had passed me by? The thought was dark, to say the least. It set me thinking and got me quite worked up. I finally confided in my husband who was also my best friend. He immediately advised me to do something about it." An engineer from the IIT, Sameer, Radhika’s husband urged her on to take the MBA entrance exams. The idea initially threw her. Studies, that too for such a competitive course, after being completely out of touch, seemed like reaching for the moon. But a supportive husband and her own natural intelligence saw Radhika through. She not only qualified for the course but cleared it on top of her class. Today Radhika holds a senior position in a leading multinational. This is not a fairy tale. The names of the characters have been changed only to protect their privacy. There are loads of women like Radhika who turned their backs on higher studies and careers, for the joys of home and hearth. And then had the gall to take it up from where they had left off. "It isn’t that difficult," says Radhika on hindsight, "My husband had quite frankly said that he didn’t enjoy pitching in at home, neither with misplaced pride or with shame. That was just the way it was. And it was cool. I took it as my responsibility while he was starting his career. And when the time came, he was my strongest champion to get back to school and work." Like Dr B S Bhat, who though unlike Sameer is super in the kitchen, stood by Nirmala, his wife, all the way when she was taking her B. Ed exams way into her 30s, along with two college-going daughters. "Marriage at 19, subsequently early children and a husband on the fast track made me put my plans on the back-burner. But I always yearned to go out there and put my talents to use." And in an academically-inclined family such as the Bhats, it wasn’t difficult. Nirmala was soon taking the auto-rickshaw, the bus, whatever it took, to get to school, to teach. And the wonderfully satisfying career lasted for almost two decades. "Yes, I did have to contend with my grown-up daughters who were a little antsy about me taking up a course during their own crucial academic years too," grins Nirmala today. But again, a quiet determination, hard work, and a strong support system saw her come through with flying colours. Both Radhika and Nirmala vouch for the fact that older students who go back to school display far more diligence and application in class, compared to their younger counterparts. A fact architect Priti Biju can take heart from. The young mother of a two-year-old settled in the US is in Mumbai for a two-month holiday and is in the middle of a course in computers. "This is just to give me an option when I start job-hunting on returning to the US," explains Priti, who has been waiting eagerly for her child to grow slightly independent to enable her to take up a career. "I had promised myself a two-year break for the baby. And so I continued to work till one week before the birth." And this confinement for two years has been frustrating, "though some days are okay. Your routine revolves around your child — from her milk to her breakfast to her bath to her dinner. But when I see the advantages she has over children whose parents have both been at work during their first years of development, I feel happy. Today she is old enough to go to play-school and that will help me go back to doing what I love too. " Thus joining the swelling numbers who have managed to combine both, with a bit of a struggle, sacrifice, sweat and satisfaction.
Not to become supermom, superwife, part-time housewife or part-time
careerwoman. But to have their cake and eat it too.—
INFS
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Dalit women bear the triple burden of caste, class and gender AT Durban, women organising themselves for the recognition of their human rights built momentum and their presence could be felt at the UN World Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance being held in Durban, South Africa, last month. For more than a decade now, women have been insisting that the violations and abuse that they experience in their homes and in public need to be recognised as human rights issues. In the period from the UN Human Rights Conference in Vienna in 1993 to the UN Women’s Conference in Beijing in 1995, the world has become familiar with the refrain "Women’s Rights are Human Rights". That refrain gathered a different urgency at the World Conference Against Racism where hundreds of Dalit (a political term used as a militant self-definition by the former untouchable castes) women gathered to articulate the ways in which caste and gender affect their lives. While social movements for change often claim a holistic perspective that is supposed to address the needs of all its constituents, women of minority or other oppressed communities often find themselves left out of the actual advocacy for rights. Thus for example, Dalit women are absent in the leadership and priorities of mainstream women’s movements and invisible in Dalit organisations led by men. This double jeopardy is particularly difficult for Dalit women given the systematic and ongoing violations they experience at the hands of men from their own community, upper caste communities, state entities and the public. The World Conference Against Racism provided Dalit women with a critical opportunity to make their concerns public. At an event entitled, Women of Dalit Communities : Breaking the Culture of Silence, held in Durban on August 29, Dalit women spoke of the daily atrocities they face. The event was organised by the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) and the National Federation of Dalit Women. While Indians are familiar with the many violations that Dalit women experience ranging from rape, burning, public humiliation, denial of access to water, food, education and land, personal testimonies provided a human face to the violations, forcing the audience to confront ongoing problems of caste discrimination. In a powerful and moving presentation, Kumud Pawde, a professor of Sanskrit at Nagpur University, described the irony of mastering a language associated with Brahman supremacy — a language that was not supposed to be heard by Dalits because it was the language of the holy scriptures. A prolific author in her own right, Professor Pawde established the first Dalit Women Writer’s Sahitya Sammelan (Writers’ Association) in India a few years ago. But the climax of her presentation came when she read out a poem dedicated to an eight-year-old girl, Dhanam, who was beaten to death by her teacher because she drank water from a pot reserved for the upper castes in her class room. Professor Pawde spoke of the beatings she received as a school girl for the same reason, and her thankfulness that she wasn’t killed in the process. And so the fundamental human right to water and food acquired a new meaning when seen through the eyes of a Dalit woman. Dalit women from Nepal described similar experiences. At a session on Human Rights Hearing on Women at the Intersection of Racism and Other Oppressions organised by the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership, Indira Ghale described her pain and alienation in her school in Dhankuta, near Kathmandu. A high school teacher for 13 years, Ghale talked about having to sit apart from her colleagues while eating and drinking, and not being able to attend any rituals or other worship during school because she was a Dalit. Describing the on-going humiliation, she spoke about parental complaints about having a Dalit teacher educate their children. The power of Dalit women breaking the culture of silence lay not in their descriptions of abuse in their determined resistance to caste discrimination. Ghale is a member of the 5,000-strong Feminist Dalit Organisation (FEDO) formed in Nepal in 1992 to fight caste and gender oppression. With a literacy rate of only 3.7 per cent for Dalit women, FEDO, the only women’s group in a Federation of 17 Dalit Organisations in Nepal, has made the education of Dalit girls and young women its priority. Professor Pawde embodies resistance to caste discrimination in every aspect of her life and work. She is the President of the All India Women’s Organisation and a National Task Force member of the 200,000-strong National Federation of Dalit Women which has chapters in eight states in India. Founded in 1987 by Ruth Manorama and other determined Dalit women, the National Federation prioritises educational, economic and political empowerment for Dalit women. "When we held our first meeting in Bangalore in 1987, it was very difficult to get Dalit women to come up to the podium and address a public audience," reminisced Ruth Manorama. "People have little understanding of the extreme levels of low self-esteem experienced by individuals who have been humiliated and told they are worth nothing from the day they are born". Introduced as an "intersectional" activist at the Breaking the Culture of Silence Event, Manorama has spent a lifetime speaking about the oppression in the lives of Dalit women. Manorama points out that the language that Dalit groups are pushing to include in the official governmental document of the World Conference Against Racism speaks of "discrimination based on descent and occupation" which can only come alive when you understand the lives of Dalit women. Dalit women have occupations that are among the most exploited and demeaning including scavenging (cleaning faeces in unhygienic and inhuman conditions) and being dedicated as children into the devadasi tradition (becoming prostitutes and sex-workers). "It is not ‘circumstances’ that create these conditions of abasement for Dalit women, but a systematic and structured system of oppression that is based on aspects of Hinduism that go back 3,000 years", says Manorama.
Manorama attributes her own leadership abilities to
her mother, Dorothy Elizabeth, who converted from Hinduism to
Christianity because she felt that the latter religion would give her
more opportunities to access education and a career. The visibility
and strength given to the cause of Dalit women’s human rights by
women like Professor Pawde, Indira Ghale and Ruth Manorama make an
otherwise chaotic non-governmental organisations (NGO) Forum and
Conference a watershed event. For the first time, the voices of Dalit,
immigrant, indigenous women and from communities of colour in are
centre stage.
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They work better in a team WHETHER woman bosses are better than their male counterparts, may be a topic of deep discussion for various corporate houses. Today, most of the companies prefer women managers because of the various fundamental qualities that make their style of working perfectly suitable to the new age jobs and duties. A discussion with two young and energetic managers working in the city helps complement the importance of the issue. Divya Jyot Kaur, presently working with the Max New York Life Insurance company as Manager Sales. She is qualified with MBA, BSc and a few PGDs in various fields related to her profession. In a reply to why most employers of the corporate world are now preferring women bosses, Divya feels that women managers provide vision and mission to the company activity. She says that women, by nature, work as a team as compared to men who often love to rule and not work with the complete team. Being a woman, she strongly feels that because every women has to perform a dual duty at home and office, she is more organised than men. She further adds that women are more positive in attitude, plan well in advance, and are more organised as well as persevering as compared to men. They are also not as gender biased as often men are. Divya, on the other hand, also credits her present image to her husband and her parents who have stood all the way to support her. She smiles as she says that that she is thankful to her husband who has always stood by her side in one way or the other.
Harinder C. Jot Singh, Manager Consumer with Indian Oil Corporation also agrees with Divya. Harinder is a sportswoman who has won laurels in table tennis. She says that a woman's positive attitude towards life and her sense of loyalty is the very basic factor why companies prefer them as managers these days. Today money has become an important reason that forces men to quit their organisation. Loyalty, as far as women go, is a basic character trait. Harinder also feels that women tend to create a supportive atmosphere for staff members to work which helps in getting the best from every one. They often work as a team, unlike men who just prefer to be the boss. They are kind at heart and understand the personal needs of her staff better. They often display transformational leaderships qualities and more interactive style of working. Harinder also feels that nothing could have been possible if her family had not been supportive. When she comes late from office, a smile from her husband is, for her, more refreshing than a hot cup of tea.  |
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Fighting
the mid-age trap SALONI KAUL was as chirpy and giggly as a young woman could be, sitting smugly and complacently with her brilliant academic achievements. There were job offers from many business houses. She was employed with a fat pay packet and avenues for quick promotion when she got married to a dashing civil servant. He doted on her but wanted her to give up her lucrative job so that they could be together wherever he got transferred. "I am there to look after you, my dear. You just relax and enjoy your life. Why should you worry at all?" For this line, she gave up her job and busied herself in bringing up their two loving kids. As she turned 50 and her children got settled in their respective careers, her husband died, leaving her stranded in the middle of life with insufficient financial security. She took out her decades-old certificates, dusted them and stepped out in search of a job. But now, she was already over age and the parameters of selection and rules and regulations had already changed. After having left her job for many years to raise her family, she was unable to utilise her education. There was no job for her. Where could she go from there? Preeti Mathur had also given up a lucrative job to look after her family "better", thinking that she could always pick up a job again whenever she required it. She had a feeling of security because of her good education. But when her husband faced severe losses and, consequently, had a heart attack it was her responsibility to help settle her children who were yet to complete their education. Her certificates proved to be literally defunct and meaningless. All the rules and regulations for employment had changed in the meantime. Besides, she had to compete against a much younger candidate who was much more enthusiastic, vibrant and energetic. Naturally, every one preferred to employ them. Where could she go from there? Vinita Sen married above her own social strata. Beautiful, vibrant and well-educated, she had landed a real lush job before her marriage. Her friends advised her not to leave her job but rosy dreams of love proved too strong. Her husband doted on her. They did not have any child even after about 30 years of marriage. But she was stunningly beautiful still. His family hated her because she was from another caste. Due to the constant interference from his family because they had always dreamt that he would marry a young woman from their own community, a wedge of misunderstanding had been created between them. After a lot of chicanery, deceit, and unfair means, the two got divorced. She received almost no financial assistance. She took out her certificates and went out hopefully in search of a job, but with the same results as others mentioned above. So, here was a 50 plus woman, looking tired and shattered, with her contact with a career world having been broken, strutting from place to place looking for a job. However, she was politely rejected everywhere. First, the people looked at her with disbelief, then measured her up and down and then, may be with a little pity which she would have resented a few years back, said in a soft, low, voice. "We are really sorry ma’am, but we have no vacancy as yet". With her dignity bruised and her future bleak with her education having become obsolete with no outputs as far as the job market is concerned, where does she go from there? Having invested all their lives lavishing love, affection and care upon their families, these women are stranded in a no-man’s land. Don’t such mothers, wives and housewives, who, (rightly or wrongly) put their families before their careers, need to be given a little more consideration? Should the givers of comfort and care be deserted and punished like that? What should a young woman do when her husband lovingly asks her to
leave her job? Shouldn’t we give a little more consideration and
care to the question of how we can help out the otherwise
well-qualified women who get trapped in mid-life in this manner. |
WHO makes for more
effective managers — men or women? This million-dollar question has
been a much-debated matter in the recent past and has led to varying
opinions. But one thing is certain, women’s natural work style fits
in better with the new kind of emerging jobs.
