Roshan Rajpal tells the story of a woman who came in for an interview at the Hyatt Hyderabad Gachibowli. A profile check revealed that she was also interviewing at other places. When Roshan asked her about this, the woman revealed that since she had been married two years employers did not want to ‘risk’ giving her a job lest she get pregnant. “She said that as a woman interviewer only I had not asked her this gendered question,” Roshan says.
Today, Roshan herself is a general manager, one of the few in the industry. As someone who began her career at 19 with Holiday Inn and quit at 25 due to family pressure following childbirth, she understands how hard it is for women to both battle and juggle society’s expectations, their family’s — sometimes unspoken but often palpable — demands, their own wants and ambitions and their employers’ biases.
Roshan came back to work after a gap of six years. “The hospitality industry is not very conducive for women to work,” she says. She struggled to find a job, and when she did, with the Carlson group in 2008 and worked for three years, she “put in double the work at a lower salary”. All through, she required her parents’ support and went through separation from her son during his Board exams, after she joined the Crowne Plaza hotel and worked there for eight years and got transferred in 2015 from Bengaluru to Hyderabad. She felt she could not leave her job a second time. She did not want to risk a second motherhood penalty.
Young beautiful businesswoman talking on mobile phone and looking at laptop while standing with her baby girl at her working place
Penalty #1: A sliced salary
“Deep-rooted biases in our society compel women to remain the primary caregivers and any attempt on their part to divert from home duties makes them a target of criticism, judgement, and exploitation,” says Neela Kaushik, the founder of Gurgaon Moms and an influencer. A business analyst with Ford Technology in Chennai, she did not find a job when she wanted to return after a three-year break as a stay-at-home mom back in 2008. “I used to be so frustrated because the few opportunities that came by extracted more work at one-third of the salary I had earned earlier,” says the now 41-year-old. Like many women, Neela started an online community that has grown to 33,000 women and is a brand today. She says her aim is to create a safe space for women from where they could network, relaunch themselves, and live their dreams.
Hyderabad-based psychologist MV Lakshmi Devi says women often reinvent themselves. According to her, it is a kind of a catharsis that brings improvement in physical and mental health.
Penalty #2: Dropping out of the workforce
A 2014 International Labour Organization study threw up a horrifying statistic: that 90% of women the world over do not go back to the jobs they held before they became mothers. Archana Talwar (name changed to protect identity), a life coach based in Bengaluru, admits she faced moments when she even felt suicidal, after her inability to get back to her IT job on the same terms and conditions. “Our systems and work culture are still not fine-tuned for a woman. One has to make individual choices. You could accept a low salary, or a loss of pay, or work under someone junior,” she says.
With constant churning of emotions, women go into a state of denial over their health. “They internalise their struggles and do not express their symptoms unless they become visible,” says Lakshmi.
- Sairee Chahal, the CEO of Sheroes, from Delhi, feels women are now understanding their worth and taking proactive steps to start their own enterprises. “The lack of jobs is a trigger in some ways for entrepreneurship and helping women develop their identity as independent professionals,” she says. At the same time, Sairee feels, several progressive businesses are now bringing more empathy into their hiring models.
- Neha Bagaria from Bengaluru says that after a three-and-a-half-year gap from work, she was beginning to lose confidence. She decided to launch JobsForHer to help women restart their careers. “Motherhood can be very lonely and I realised more than flexible job conditions women look for flexible mindsets,” she says. Yet, she adds, nobody likes to lose a good pool of human resources. Several connecting platforms and communities of diverse kinds of women from leaders and mentors to motivators, guides and co-partners are seeing increased participation now.
Penalty #3: Working harder
When Adyasha N was expecting her baby, she was working with an IT company, but a sabbatical scheme had just been announced. When she wanted to join back after almost 18 months, she suffered a loss of confidence and feared she had not kept pace in skill development; people junior to her had moved ahead. It took her more than three years to cover the gap. “I stayed with my parents to get enough free time to focus on areas I had lost time on. I worked much harder.”
Lakshmi says women keep pushing themselves because they also carry the guilt of either leaving their children in crèches or with parents. Plus, there is the fear about their own savings.
Sneha suicide prevention helpline: 044-24640060 (8 am to 10 pm); 044-24640050 (24/7)
