L&T Chairman S H Subramanyan, why not stare at ‘the wife’? There’s a lot corporate honchos could learn

Does that mean women are seen as disposable human resources and not worthy of being stakeholders in this dream journey? What kind of misogynistic messaging is this for the women employees of L&T and for women everywhere, who still find it difficult to make their way into corporate boardrooms? Deloitte’s Women in the Boardroom report of 2023 showed that women had just 17.1 per cent of board seats in India, while India’s Best Workplaces for Women report of October 2024 showed an 11 per cent gap between women in foundational, mid-management roles and those who are CEOs.

Let’s turn the question on its head. Why not stare at the wife for the goddess she is? For that would still be a small acknowledgement of her role in making sure the man gets to chase his ambitions without worrying about dropping the kids to school, helping them with their homework, taking the pets to the vet, paying bills, planning budgets, vacations, attending PTAs and building a multi-tasking ecosystem even as she caters to her own demands at the workplace. As social media brought Meena Subrahmanyan, the L&T chairman’s wife into the conversation, she is one such goddess to stare at and admire. A social welfare activist and also vice-chair of the biotech division of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, she continues to balance her dual roles and needs to be celebrated as much.

Why not stare at the wife, who has worked equally hard at the workplace to afford a life that one would not dare to dream about? Think about Sudha Murthy, who gave the seed capital to Narayana Murthy to start Infosys even after the failure of his first business venture. By the latter’s own admission, “She was much more qualified than the other founders” but chose to stay away from an active role in the company after it became successful lest it be misconstrued as a self-serving family monopoly. Surely, such idealism deserves more than just “staring at”.

Why not stare at the many wives who did not turn into Sudha Murthys but decided to step back in their workplaces, passed over assignments and promotions, and even dropped out midway to take care of another enterprise called family? So many of these women lived with their marginalisation at the workplace when they decided to embrace motherhood, raising their boys to respect the equity, not the polarity of girls. If younger men are finally sharing family responsibilities in a spirit of partnership, then the women who enabled them need to be stared at.

Why not stare at the wife, who may have gone through several painful IVF (in vitro fertilisation) cycles for the sake of the family legacy, without any protest? Or the one who readily agreed to be an organ donor so that a bread-winning family member could survive, even if it meant parcelling away her future health. Yes, almost 80 per cent of organ donors are women, expected to understand their “heightened responsibilities” during family crises.

Why not stare at the wife who silently bears the sexist humiliation and irony when the husband very publicly jokes that “she’s the boss” or the “Home Ministry” and fakes being a timid slave to her desire? Falsely deified and meanly sullied at the same time, the wife wages a daily battle to hold on to her own axis to spin her identity on.

Indeed, stare in amazement at the wife who has long ceded the stupidity of the games of one-upmanship to the wisdom of being complete in her own world. One who practises yoga and self-love, who can do without your attention but still makes you feel self-important and stares right back at you — with a lot of love and without malice. And since the discussion has been about hours, spare a thought for the wife who has selflessly devoted long hours to the husband who became a CEO but was smart enough to manage a sweet spot of her own.