Time for mother’s lib

Motherhood might be a rewarding proposition to most women, but it is almost never so from a career point of view. That’s probably one of the reasons why an Indra Nooyi, a mother, makes headlines when she makes it to the top of the corporate ladder in an MNC like PepsiCo. But there are reasons why success stories like hers are few, and are exceptions which prove the rule — that motherhood takes its toll on a woman’s career.

Why does she have to choose?
Earlier this week, the school of management of Cranfield University, UK and Community Business, an NGO, released a study titled ‘Women on Corporate Boards in India 2010’. The report, which surveyed the BSE top 100 companies, revealed that out of a total of 1,112 directorships on the BSE-100, just 59, or barely 5.3%, were held by women.

Out of the executive directors (EDs) — who are likely to have risen from within the company ranks — only 2.5% were women. Further, the women EDs had been in the organisation twice as long as the male EDs, suggesting bias in the promotion process. The study concluded that at the current rate, it would take four generations for corporate India to achieve a modicum of gender parity in the board room.

Women directors interviewed for the study admitted that “there were two points in a woman’s life when they have to take a decision ridden by guilt and circumstances. One, when they have babies initially. Second if they have a child in class 9 and 10 — just before school leaving age, who is not doing well [academically]. At both these stages you lose a lot of talented women.”

Evidently, even as more and more women are being encouraged to pursue their ambitions, a prospective mother is often forced to make an uneasy trade-off between work and home, each with its opportunity costs. “After having a child, we are still expected to do everything right at work, and you also have your own expectations from yourself,” says Bangalore-based interior designer Rinkoo Gupta, 30.

“I was the kind of person who would never miss deadlines even if it meant doing an all-nighter. Now, I carry forward the work to the next day and that is bothering me. Yet there are times I ask myself why I am doing this at the cost of my daughter. But I am also an ambitious person, so the decision to quit is not an easy one for me.”

Yet most career women, with an eye on the biological clock, do end up taking time off to become mothers, right in the middle of their most productive years. Says sociologist Manjima Bhattacharjya, “Apart from physical limitations (breastfeeding in the first year), there are deeper issues. Women are perceived to be secondary earners, not primary ones. Instead, they are considered as the primary care-givers, never the men. These restrictive gender roles direct women’s choices.”

The trade-off
Even if a woman resumes work post-motherhood, the effect on the earnings is permanent. A University of Virginia study quantifies this tradeoff. Researcher Amalia Miller found that in the US, a woman in her 20s increases her lifetime earnings by 10% if she delays the birth of her first child by a year. If she chooses to have a child and take a career break, the wage hit comes in two parts: an immediate loss of earnings, and a slower rate of growth right up to the day she retires.

Apart from the loss in income, perceptions at the workplace have a role to play in fewer women making it to the top of the organisational ladder. “People always complain that women who are mothers do not hang around in the office working late. Usually, this is because they have to go home early to do household/child care work.

Also, if they need time off to attend to children’s illnesses, and so on, these are perceived as slacking off, rather than recognising her multiple roles and respecting that,” says Bhattacharjya. Adds Flavia Agnes, Mumbai-based women’s rights activist and lawyer, “Either the mother has to learn to multitask, defer motherhood, or have fewer children as a coping mechanism.”

Elango R, chief HR officer at IT company, MphasiS, forwards some representative statistics. “About 22% of our employees are women. At manager grade and above, 11% are women. In our BPO division, 48% are women, but there too, at the managerial level, it is only around 15%,” he says. “Of the 80-85% who get back to work after a break, which is mostly after marriage or child bearing, some move into new roles, while others continue where they had left off.”

Says Dr Saraswati Raju, director, Women Studies Programme, School of Social Sciences, JNU, “There is evidence that women are putting their careers at priority, that there is some kind of breaking through, but at the same time, most women who have reached the top are single or divorced,” she says. “But it’s a mixed bag; there are also a lot of single women who are not reaching the top.”

Flexibility can help
With child-rearing deemed as the mother’s responsibility, women who come back to the job market after a maternity break look for flexibility as opposed to jobs involving long hours. Sheetal Nangalia, 32, is a case in point. Nangalia worked with ICICI’s six-sigma team and held strategic roles with ABN Amro, all of which involved 12-hour routines. After giving birth to a baby, she got back to work in three months. She was allowed flexible timings but the pressure was always there and she felt she was missing out on her daughter.

So she quit her job and joined a company located closer to her house. Since she had no background in the new field, she started with a small profile, handling a hair-care product at Juice, the salon chain. Soon she was managing 12 of their 14 outlets through CCTV footage relayed on her BlackBerry.

A study conducted by Indrani Majumdar and Neetha N of the Delhi-based Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS) for the Delhi Commission of Women, interviewed mid- and junior-level female employees in the private sector. The researchers found that a majority of them were single and the ones who were married dropped out within a few months of marriage. “Even the single women said we can’t work after marriage because upward mobility within a job would require greater number of hours at work,” says senior fellow, CWDS, Neetha N. “Modern service sector largely has single women.”

Agnes identifies two reasons why women compromise on their career for the sake of motherhood. “One is their own notion of what is expected of them; and two, if they don’t fulfill their expected roles as mothers, their marriages are likely to fall apart,” she says.

“Every time a child performs badly in school, teachers blame the working mother. So even if you’re working, you’re  expected to be a full-time mom.”

Policy matters
Since gender roles across the world have stayed almost static, as indicated by recent studies on reconciling work and motherhood, policy initiatives are seen as important agents in changing them. In this regard, lessons can be drawn from Sweden, whose dual-earner policy has been of interest to policymakers and academicians across the world.

Under this model, the total leave period allowed to a father and mother is 16 months. Of these, for 13 months, the couple is entitled to 80% of their previous earnings. It is a common leave pool that can be divided between father and mother, and to ensure that men pitch in as much during the duration of this leave, two months have been reserved as compulsory “daddy-months”.

In 2006, a new gender equality tax bonus was introduced to encourage more equal sharing of care work. After these 16 months, the child is ready to enter the extensive and high quality network of state-funded childcare centres. Relieved of the double burden, the female labour force in Sweden increased from around 50% in the mid-1960s to over 80% in the early 1990s, when the participation rate among women nearly paralleled that of men. In India however, there is hardly any state-sponsored childcare. The Maternity Benefits Act, 1961 entitles a woman to leave for a maximum period of 12 weeks — six weeks before and six after the delivery — with maternity benefits. Sadly, many firms do not comply with this norm.

The central government, however, provides for six months maternity leave to its employees, as also two years’ leave at any time in their careers till their child is 18. “More than the government, I feel the corporate world can play a critical role in setting the standards for policies that respect the multiple roles women play. Companies can encourage men to participate in care responsibilities and work with their partner in getting the best out of her,” says Bhattacharjya. Till such time, to borrow Ann Crittenden’s observation from her book, The Price Of Motherhood (2001), the woman will seem liberated but not the mother.