I never believed in the term IT Woman. I thought there is only an IT professional. This was the lesson I learnt in the initial days of my engineering. During lab sessions, my teacher said, in a professional environment there is no man or woman in a professional environment.
There may be a lot of biological and psychological differences between a man and a woman. But, in an environment like IT these differences do not have any relevance. Here only your smartness and logic is valued, which is equal for a man and a woman. Even then there are a lot of social conditions in India which will make an Indian woman work harder to be in par with her male colleague. But, these are never considered in the design of the whole system.
In most of the MNCs there are a lot of forums for various groups like Women, Gays, Lesbians; etc. Most of these forums are made to show that corporates care for these groups. I always have thought that why we need to have separate forums. We just need to consider everyone equal, because at the end of the day each and every one is delivering the same amount of work. Each of us is billing the client at the same rate. But, recently I started realizing that there is a need for more support for Women. This support has to come from everyone. There is no need to have a formal forum, but for that everybody’s thought process has to be changed.
When I was a teenager, I had heard many people saying that it is a Man’s world. I always wanted to break that concept; I had most of my friends as boys. In college I was a single girl in an otherwise all boys committee. When selected to an MNC, I was the single girl in a group of 10. I always had a hidden pleasure for all these, since I wanted to break the men’s world. I found that I am one of the very few ladies in my office. I found myself as the single woman in my project team. I always made others’ in my group understand that I need not to be over cared or over supported as I am the only lady in the group.
When I got married my colleagues expected me to behave like an ideal Indian wife, preparing all the three meals for my husband, to become shyer, to avoid project parties, detach from my male friends, to wear sari to work place; etc. I surprised them by maintaining my previous image.
I always knew that when compared to my unmarried male colleague, with whom I will be compared for my promotions and recognitions, I will have to work harder. I may have to sacrifice my quality time with my family. I will have to rush to office to support a production migration on a week end, even when my husband is still sleeping.
I may not be able to rest and relax after a day’s work. I may have to put artificial smile on my face on a night out party. I may have to agree with the tight project schedules, even when I know in my mind that my work life balance is going to be screwed up.
Very little did I realize that all my efforts are going to be just reduced into some numbers when Senior Management reviews my work. I never knew that I will be addressed by some employee number along with the number of hours billed to the client. My competitors always had more client service hours, owing to their single status and 24X7 work attitudes. I wondered why no body is appreciating a woman’s ability in delivering equally qualified work in less number of hours while maintaining a healthy work life balance. This realization shocked me. That was when one of my colleagues asked me a question, whom would you select as the best performer when a male and female has equal number of credits, equal client service hours. I had an answer in my mind, but I asked him answer the question. He answered, “I will select the male professional”. I didn’t give my answer. I was completely taken aback with his answer.
His answer made me think why women professionals are not given more opportunities like their male counterparts. This is because they assume many things, they think that when a woman joins the company, she will leave it to join her husband, when she gets married she will behave unprofessionally, when she bears a child she will lose concentration on work and will take more number of holidays, when given an onsite opportunity she will start cribbing to return back in a few months. I challenge all IT bigwigs to stop assuming and give women the same opportunities. Then you will see more women in the top of career ladder, even for the sake of showing some numbers.
Evaluating some one’s performance based on some number logic can be done by any kid. It doesn’t require any management gurus. But, they are required if we can evaluate each and everyone based on their given opportunities and how they reciprocated to them. It is time to change the systems. Now, let me give my answer to the question which my colleague had asked me. My answer is that I will appreciate both of them as best performers. No rule or evaluation system is bigger than the efforts spent by the professionals. I may change my evaluation system but, I will never disappoint my colleague and will never disrespect his / her efforts.
And, to my dear readers let me convey a good message to you that I got promoted this year. Let me move forward in my career and help my colleagues change their thought process. Let’s change the old systems. Let us bring in equality.
There may be a lot of biological and psychological differences between a man and a woman. But, in an environment like IT these differences do not have any relevance. Here only your smartness and logic is valued, which is equal for a man and a woman. Even then there are a lot of social conditions in India which will make an Indian woman work harder to be in par with her male colleague. But, these are never considered in the design of the whole system.
In most of the MNCs there are a lot of forums for various groups like Women, Gays, Lesbians; etc. Most of these forums are made to show that corporates care for these groups. I always have thought that why we need to have separate forums. We just need to consider everyone equal, because at the end of the day each and every one is delivering the same amount of work. Each of us is billing the client at the same rate. But, recently I started realizing that there is a need for more support for Women. This support has to come from everyone. There is no need to have a formal forum, but for that everybody’s thought process has to be changed.
When I was a teenager, I had heard many people saying that it is a Man’s world. I always wanted to break that concept; I had most of my friends as boys. In college I was a single girl in an otherwise all boys committee. When selected to an MNC, I was the single girl in a group of 10. I always had a hidden pleasure for all these, since I wanted to break the men’s world. I found that I am one of the very few ladies in my office. I found myself as the single woman in my project team. I always made others’ in my group understand that I need not to be over cared or over supported as I am the only lady in the group.
When I got married my colleagues expected me to behave like an ideal Indian wife, preparing all the three meals for my husband, to become shyer, to avoid project parties, detach from my male friends, to wear sari to work place; etc. I surprised them by maintaining my previous image.
I always knew that when compared to my unmarried male colleague, with whom I will be compared for my promotions and recognitions, I will have to work harder. I may have to sacrifice my quality time with my family. I will have to rush to office to support a production migration on a week end, even when my husband is still sleeping.
I may not be able to rest and relax after a day’s work. I may have to put artificial smile on my face on a night out party. I may have to agree with the tight project schedules, even when I know in my mind that my work life balance is going to be screwed up.
Very little did I realize that all my efforts are going to be just reduced into some numbers when Senior Management reviews my work. I never knew that I will be addressed by some employee number along with the number of hours billed to the client. My competitors always had more client service hours, owing to their single status and 24X7 work attitudes. I wondered why no body is appreciating a woman’s ability in delivering equally qualified work in less number of hours while maintaining a healthy work life balance. This realization shocked me. That was when one of my colleagues asked me a question, whom would you select as the best performer when a male and female has equal number of credits, equal client service hours. I had an answer in my mind, but I asked him answer the question. He answered, “I will select the male professional”. I didn’t give my answer. I was completely taken aback with his answer.
His answer made me think why women professionals are not given more opportunities like their male counterparts. This is because they assume many things, they think that when a woman joins the company, she will leave it to join her husband, when she gets married she will behave unprofessionally, when she bears a child she will lose concentration on work and will take more number of holidays, when given an onsite opportunity she will start cribbing to return back in a few months. I challenge all IT bigwigs to stop assuming and give women the same opportunities. Then you will see more women in the top of career ladder, even for the sake of showing some numbers.
Evaluating some one’s performance based on some number logic can be done by any kid. It doesn’t require any management gurus. But, they are required if we can evaluate each and everyone based on their given opportunities and how they reciprocated to them. It is time to change the systems. Now, let me give my answer to the question which my colleague had asked me. My answer is that I will appreciate both of them as best performers. No rule or evaluation system is bigger than the efforts spent by the professionals. I may change my evaluation system but, I will never disappoint my colleague and will never disrespect his / her efforts.
And, to my dear readers let me convey a good message to you that I got promoted this year. Let me move forward in my career and help my colleagues change their thought process. Let’s change the old systems. Let us bring in equality.
