#dnaEdit: Unequal world

It was a rewind to antiquated times when Microsoft’s India-born CEO Satya Nadella talked of karma and faith while advising women on how they should conduct themselves when asking for pay hikes; words that were strangely anachronistic, sitting uneasily with his position as head of a tech giant with connects across the furthest reaches of the globe.

The storm of outrage that followed his comments at a meeting to celebrate ‘women in computing’ last week saw Nadella backtrack quickly. But that was not enough to erase the subtext of the continuing disparities between women and men in the workforce and the differing attitudinal expectations from them. It was not just about the glass ceiling but the many barriers of gender biases that are built on — and perpetuated by — stereotypes. 

Quite ironically, Nadella’s comments were in response to a question by Microsoft board member Maria Klawe at an event in Phoenix. Asked for his advice, the global honcho said women should have faith that the system will “give you the right raises”. He went on to say, “And that I think might be one of the additional ‘superpowers’, that quite frankly, women who don’t ask for a raise have. Because that’s good karma.” The statement quite predictably hit global headlines and Nadella followed up with an apology on Twitter and an email to employees that his comments were “inarticulate” and “completely wrong”. 

But the genie was out of the bottle. While Nadella’s prompt apology must be appreciated, his meaning was all too clear. Women, as opposed to their male counterparts, must play the part of the quieter, gentler sex and leave the aggression of going out there to ask for a raise to the ‘other’. 

The comment also underscored the fact that it is not a level-playing field for women employees, who are heavily outnumbered. At Microsoft, only about 29 per cent of its more than 100,000 workforce are women with 17 per cent doing technical jobs. This is broadly reflective of the situation in the rest of the tech sector. 

The anomaly exists in salaries too. According to a report, job site Glassdoor said that a male Microsoft senior software engineer gets about $137,000 a year against $129,000 for women. Microsoft can’t be singled out, of course. The American Association of University Women estimates that last year women were paid 78 per cent of what equally qualified men received.

Tragically, this is how it is in the organised sector of a country the world looks to for direction. In India — with its complexities of unorganised and organised labour, of rural and urban divides and of the many millions of women slaving away in invisible jobs in farms and factories — this gender pay gap is widened immeasurably. This is so even in the tech sector, where women constitute 30 per cent of the workforce in the four biggies, Wipro, Infosys, HCL and TCS. According to Catalyst India WRC research, women in the tech sector start out as equals but lag behind men by about Rs3.8 lakh in terms of salaries about 12 years later. 

It is an embarrassing truism to state in this day and age that women and men are equal and a woman worker must get equal wages and promotional opportunities and treated at par with her male colleague. And when corporate leaders like Nadella advocate passive acceptance and karmic faith that everything will turn out for the best for them, it can only underscore that the world is truly an unequal place.