Hitting the Glass Ceiling in the Corporate World

The statement if taken at face value is a tad demoralising for intelligent and driven young women, who have 'had it all'throughout their academic life and have made decisive career choices before embarkingon their professional journey withhopesand aspirations of making it to the top some day. Ask the women who have already traversed the path and experienced it all, and each one will have a story to tell.

Balancing work and home has been a tight rope walk for all working women, much more so in the competitive and cut throat Corporate world. Gruelling work schedules combined with pressures of working in lean organisations with little or no back up makes it even more challenging.Added to that, the responsibility of managing homes and children are often skewed towards women.Women having to work twice as hard to prove half their worth is not a mere cliché.

Various factors act as impediments in a smooth and seamless career graph for women in the Corporate World. Usually, the phase of life when a woman embarks on her career is also the time to 'settle down', get married and have kids, for ignoring the biological clock could have disastrous consequences. Burdened with the responsibilities thrust upon her during these initial years of professional life, women in the Corporate Sector are often hit by the first obstacle of career growth when they avail maternity leave for long months and have to be away for form work to provide child care, which could have a cumulative affecton her career graph.

Despite, all difficulties, these initial years are scalablefor most women with family support and their inherent ability to multi task. However, what is damaging is the impression createdand carried that she would not be able to shoulder leadership roles later in her career. By the time she reaches mid career, a woman employeeis handling a fair amount of work pressure and is very much in control of her work – life balance. But the fact remains that beyond a certain level, her growth prospects hit a roadblock despite having the acumen, dexterity and the personality to take on leadership roles.

Glass ceiling is a complex phenomenon with various factors coming into play. Patriarchy is foremost, which is universal, else we would perhaps have more women in the Board of Companies in developed countries like USA and Europe.Despite all the talk of equality, gender hegemony is difficult to wipe out and will take a few more generations to overcome.

Most working women are judged by clubbing them in the gender bracket and not as an individuals like men are. They are thought to be having generally the same traits, thought process and attitude towards work and are considered slow runners with less initiative. They are often overlooked while distributing important and challenging roles within the company because their credibility to handle pressure is often questioned.Further, nurturing and grooming for leadership role starts early on and women usually lose out in the race in comparison to their male peers since that is the time that their responsibility towards their children do not allow them devote extra hours at work or dislocate to locations away from their family.

Most men in positions of authority are also not too comfortable in having women as part of the management inner circle for various reasons including discussions that may take place in the company grapevine, which is avoidable and convenient. These are subtle issues which are best not discussed openly and women employees prefer not to raise a voice, fearing a backlash or being talked about.

True, we have had inspiring women who have reached the climbed the Corporate ladder fast and even reached the top jobs overcoming all these obstacles and hats off to them, but it has been more of an exception than a rule. Public Sector behemoths like ONGC, EIL , SCI and IndianOil have had women as CMDs and Directors in the recent past which has been no less than a breath of fresh air and an inspiration for a whole general of women employees to dream big.This trend is welcome and will hopefully trickle down to more and more organisations.

In the private sector, women leaders are mostly ones who have inherited the legacy of their fathers or uncles, though some of them have been able to remarkably add value to their existing business by bringing on the table divergent perspectives that are hardwired into them because of their gender.

It has been researched and established that an economy that does not fully tap into the leadership skills offered by women is necessarily inefficient. Talent is left on the table when women are not placed in leadership positions. But the ground reality is that despite their worth, their credibility, their intelligence, manydeserving and dedicated women somehow cannot make it to the top.

It is important for the Company managements to realise that unless they make it possible for women working for them to balance their work and family by providing flexibility as they require, the Companies would lose a huge amount of leadership talent, which is not smart for theirbusiness and the society.

-Madhuchanda Adhikari

The author can be reached at madhuchanda.adhikari@yahoo.com

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