The Hindu Business Line : The changing Indian woman

One of the finest panel discussions that formed part of the Incredible India@60 campaign in New York, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry, Tourism and seven other ministries, was the one titled ‘Women and Global Leadership’. Jointly presented by the CII and the Yale University at the swank Yale Club in an upmarket area of New York, it had a power pack of four distinguished Indian women — actress and social activist Shabana Azmi, PepsiCo Chai rman and CEO Indra Nooyi, HSBC India CEO Naina Lal Kidwai and Chairperson of the Akshara Foundation, Pratham Books and the Arghyam Trust, Rohini Nilekani.

There were many magic moments in the room, when four accomplished and confident women, each of whom had made a mark in her respective area of work, interacted among themselves and took on questions from the audience. Shabana, we were told by the Vice-President of Yale University Linda Koch Lorimer who introduced the panellists, had just come after demonstrating before the United Nations building. The glowing and energetic actress flowed into the room with a mock: “Hey, guys clap; you’re supposed to clap when we walk in,” and did what she is best at — entertaining the audience with her humour and wit, but also raising some hard and serious issues that ailed Indian women even 60 years after Independence.

The panel had brought together “some of the most highly visible and influential women from India in the corporate world, the arts, and civil society” to give their perspective on what they considered the “principal social achievements by women in India since the 1990s; how women hade contributed to India’s advancement over the last two decades; the areas conducive to women’s growth and the challenges they continued to face.

Working wives popular

Ms Kidwai set the tone for the discussion of the entire Incredible India campaign — a young and confident nation finally finding its place on the world platform. She sprung a surprise on the packed hall when she disclosed the results of a recent CLSA study in India, which found that 80 per cent of men under 30 covered by the study preferred working spouses and 60 per cent of those that were married wanted working spouses. “This shows a great change in the attitude of urban middle class India, where today the women are working with the support of their spouses,” she said.

Ms Nooyi, who has been consistently making it among the top women in Fortune’s annual list of the most influential women in the world, raised quite a few eyebrows in the room when she admitted that in her scheme of priorities her role as mother was the most important, followed by that of CEO, and then wife.

That the changes in India continued to surprise her came through in the anecdote she related about her daughter’s travel to India. “Before she left, I firmly told her you’ll wear no shorts or tank tops in Chennai and packed only salwar-kameez in her suitcase. Later she called me from Chennai and said: ‘Mom, I look like a freak here because everybody else is wearing what you told me not to wear!”

Coming to her role as the CEO of a beverage giant, she said multinationals had created a conducive atmosphere that facilitated women taking on leadership roles. Indian companies should follow suit to provide a “more inclusive participation” of women in order to boost the growth on not only the organisation but the entire country.

Ms Azmi said that in the field of arts, culture and entertainment, stereotypes were stumbling and for the first time women in their 40s and 50s (“that doesn’t mean I’m above 50”!), were being given important roles. Quite a few films had stories written around female lead characters; “ten years ago it was unimaginable that women over 30 would get a mainstream role in a Hindu movie,” she said.

Thankfully movies of the 1960s like Main chup rahungy (I shall remain silent) had become history. Also, the patronising attitude towards women from their male colleagues was changing too. She recalled an era when she was invited as one of the judges on an international film panel. Not surprisingly, she was the only woman there, and predictably the other members said “things like you are the Queen and we will be your slaves, but when they found that the ‘queen’ had a mind of her own and could not be pushed by them, then it was a different story altogether. Then it was like: ‘Oh, this third World woman, and an actress to boot, has views of her own’!”

But while things had changed on the gender front in India and continued to change, “we have to remember that India lives in several centuries simultaneously and we have several challenges before us, such as maternal mortality, female infanticide, women having to grapple with poverty, livelihood and water issues.

The brighter side

Ms Nilekani, a former journalist and wife of Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, is now actively involved in the social sector through her three voluntary organisations (“set up when I found I had a little money!”). She said that while there were several challenges before Indian women, particularly in rural areas, urban slums, etc., one should not lose sight of the “brighter side of the story”.

And this pertained to the fact that 1.4 million women were elected to local bodies and while the first generation of some of the female panchayat heads might have been “rubber stamps”, they had evolved, and grown into leadership positions. “Also, the gap between girls and boys in enrolment in schools has closed”, and that was something to celebrate.

In her work, she constantly talked to young girls from disadvantaged social and financial sectors and was amazed to find that all of them now had a goal to get educated and gain financial independence.

She added that though there were more and more outlays on social sectors such as health-care and education by the Government, constant pressure should be put on the administration by civil society to ensure systematic stepping up of social spending and implementation of projects. Also, a private-public partnership was essential to ensure that government projects were implemented; “we certainly need better delivery models.”

Ms Nilekani also said that hard questions have to be asked by the entire Indian society on the heinous practice of female foeticide. “When 20 to 40 million girl children are estimated to be missing, we have to ask questions on what happened to these girls.”

Glass ceiling?

Coming to the glass ceiling, relating her experience in the corporate world the HSBC India chief said that many women believe that there is a glass ceiling as they go up, but “many a times it is a glass ceiling that is self-created”, and women would have to push themselves out of this self-imposed ceiling.

Both Ms Kidwai and Ms Nooyi admitted that for successful career women there would always be issues related to their roles as wife, mother and a senior management position. While Ms Kidwai said “it is a leap of faith that you have to take” even though questions would continue to haunt you, Ms Nooyi said: “As an Indian wife people expect you to be a role model and you are always trying to be a superwoman.”

Traversing the distance between a superwoman and a confident woman created by the microfinance system in India Ms Kidwai gave the example of a Gujarati woman, a member of Sewa, who got up at a meeting and said that after 10 long years of participation in micro-credit programmes, she could now claim her identity through her own name. “She said: ‘I am no longer known as my husband’s wife or my son’s mother’.” This was a model that needed to be replicated several-fold to bring about the economic emancipation of women at the grassroots level, she said.

Both the corporate head honchos proudly reported that in their recruitment drives they made sure there would be no gender bias or prejudice and the end result was that a good percentage of their new recruits were women.

Ms Kidwai added that today the BPO sector in India had nearly 50-60 per cent women workers. “Many of these young women come from second and third-tier cities; they have immense energy and many of them will move on to transformative work. They are always asking what more needs to be done to move higher, and that is a very encouraging signal.”

Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in