International Women's day...

This writing was totally unintentional, lot of thoughts crossed my mind as I sat through the International Women’s day panel of discussion at work place, had to write it somewhere.

Unfortunately, Women’s bill did not pass through in the parliament (courtesy: Yadavs), otherwise it would have been a wonderful gift from Sonia Gandhi to the country.

Coming to equality for women, with a lot said and done, we know that prejudice exists. That is why we have a Women’s day, Women’s bill of reservation to educate much privileged lot that we are quite capable and need equal rights.

One of the thoughts that came to my mind about women being in the forefront of the corporate world is, Do we take ourselves seriously?>

We can complain about the glass ceiling (I am sure it exists). But it won’t vanish one day through the magic wand, we are responsible as much as the other half of the human fraternity for what we are today, for the good and the bad, that is. I think we can’t clap with one hand.

I have observed woman colleagues over last 7 years of my career and I see two things probably responsible for women not being there, where they could have been.

Firstly, the prejudice or call it bias that men and women are not created equal, exists. It is so strongly entwined in us that we might as well deny it exists in us. It may have come from origin, ethnicity, culture, upbringing, economy or name anything. I do not certainly talk about men when I say prejudice. It exists among women for women as well. It is for all of us to see a woman from an unbiased perspective and believe that she has been created equal and given a chance and support, she is as capable of any of others on this planet.

If the first thing is seeing everyone equally, second most important thing is to see ourselves equally. Do you take yourself seriously, woman? If Bias exists in men, this not taking them seriously is a specific prejudice we women carry with ourselves. I have observed many working women; we do not tend to take ourselves too seriously at work. Given a task, we (at least some of us) tend to shrug it off saying “oh it is for the hard working lot. Probably I do not have enough capability or information to do it”. We let others (men in the team) take credit of our work (in case it happens), sometimes we take work casually, we leave the major responsibility to our able colleagues. We let them do all the talking for us. If anyone has to take us seriously, I believe it should start from us. Unless we make an effort to project ourselves equally capable, unintentionally, by their sheer nature, our wonderful male colleagues will out do us. It is important for us to feel the competition and believe that we are in the race. If we want to be treated equally, we should start behaving as if we are equal.

I am sure a whole lot of women have achieved a mountain of accomplishments out there. I am talking about a very average working woman, who ventures out to get that other half of the bread for the family. A slight change to the basic nature of the woman can bring this out I believe.