Throw some light upon “Bridging the male-female gap in the industry”.
Bridging the gap between male – female ratio has already started in the industry. 10 years back what we saw as workforce mix has improved drastically in 2015. Work from home, working part time, sabbatical at any point in the career, travelling onsite for customer location are the things which have been taken into consideration these days while hiring women in the corporate world. Hence the gap is already reducing as we speak.
What is the impotance of maintaining balance between personal and professional life for women?
A successful career can be built only on a stable personal life, if one does not have fulfilling and peaceful personal life, he / she can’t built a successful career. This holds good for both men and women. Having said this, women tend to carry the home responsibility on their shoulder a lot more than men, hence it’s a natural process that they give up their career at the first possible instance when it comes to deciding personal peace over career.
It’s difficult to change the basic DNA of male & female. How much ever one argues on this topic, it’s fundamental to understand and accept that men & women think, act & behave differently. Hence a lot of tasks a woman can do man can’t do and vice-e-versa. There are many occasions women give up on their career for personal reasons like motherhood, medical reasons for someone at home, ageing parents or in laws etc, which makes them take breaks during their career; hence the systematic career progression that man can go thru, women find it difficult; hence less than 10% of sr. management cadre has women folks, in the corporate world
Being a successful business woman, what are the suggestions you would like to give to young business women?
When it comes to running a business, you can’t take it for granted. Its as demanding or may be more demanding than being employed. I have seen people who feel that since they can’t commit to office timings they will start their own business. Business is not meant for those who can’t put in hard work in a disciplined manner. If you are serious about creating a brand, you have to be professional, committed, disciplined and top it all results driven.
Tune in your intuition. Women have intuitive decision making capabilities in abundance. They should tap into this available vast capability within themselves.
Learn to say NO. If you have decided on a framework for your business and you strongly believe in it, don’t settle for less; learn to say NO to anything apart from your focus area.
Enjoy the ups & downs of the business, since it’s that unpredictability that you signed up for. If you want your life and income to be predictable, you should take up employment opportunities, not business.
We would like to know, who is your ideal and how he/she has a great impact to be in this business?
I didn’t have any role model when I started my business. Everything I did for 19 years, I learnt it on the go (job). I have no business background, none in my immediate family or my husband’s family have any business understanding or capability. Hence there was no rule book to be followed. This has its own positives and negatives. Positives are the learning is new & without inhibitions, BKMs are created than using someone else’s understanding; ignorance is bliss, which helped me take bold decisions and question the status quo. Negatives are I didn’t have anything to fall back on. The pressure to be right at the first instant was high, which kept me on my toes always. Since I didn’t have any role model, I learnt from everyone, I was listening intently, my ears and eyes were always open for inputs, I was constantly learning, I learnt from my husband a lot, who was working in Intel at that time, I learnt from my customers, candidates, employees, vendors, my children, everyone was a teacher to me. I was able to build a 150 member organization in 7 years time and sustain it for another 5-6 years with a clear process metrics which was servicing IT permanent positions exclusively, till the recession hit us in 2009. That was my journey as an entrepreneur.
From your point of view, how and where women are moving through the talent pipeline and what all sectors are yet to experience them?
Sectors where there is adequate mix of workforce such as IT / ITES, Teaching, Administration, Banking, Govt, Nursing opportunities are provided equally, but women are not able to utilize it because of personal commitments. Almost 70% who take up any professional opportunity continue their career till middle management, post that they retract their goals; as the talent pipeline moves into sr. management, it goes down to 10%. The sectors yet to experience them is Heavy industry, Mechanical Engineering, Infrastructure Building etc.