The matter of employee welfare and workloads in corporations is back in discussion after the unfortunate death of Anna Sebastian Perayil, a 26-year-old chartered accountant based in Pune. According to her mother, Anna lost her life due to “work stress”.
This time, the discussion has acquired a welcome gender lens. While India remains a laggard in the percentage share of women in several job types, its professional women work the most hours globally. Reports have also illustrated the disparity between men and women with regard to unpaid domestic and care activity. Compared to their male counterparts, employed women spent more than twice the time on daily unpaid labour. At a systemic level, this suggests that even if, in a version of the future, the percentage share of women in jobs nears the halfway mark, equality and equity may not converge at the workplace.
Having worked in the financial services industry for more than 13 years, where I spent most of my time in middle management, I can safely say that I have lived the above data points and assertions. I hired and promoted women in my team as I did men, and when this simple, bipartisan, and in no way particularly creditworthy behaviour led to an evident parity in numbers over time, the difference in composition vis-a-vis other teams attracted comment from my male middle-management colleagues. Some saw a kind of “strategy” in it; others, things more dubious. To me, the difference was hardly noticeable until pointed out.
There were occasions, however, when I got to probe why other teams had fewer women. The reasons I made out, nearly all of them full of astonishing biases, stayed the same over the years.
The oft-repeated answer to my team-composition queries was that male managers believed their team’s work involved long hours and that women would not be too savvy for that kind of work. There was an element of avoiding a burden too: They didn’t want to deal with the extra care needed to ensure that the junior reached home safely after her long hours. This “extra” here was completely imaginary, however, and no peer of mine could ever narrate, other than an odd instance or two, when they had done anything concrete to ensure safe transport for a colleague.
Although a small factor, the fear of being accused of sexual harassment also contributed to some managers’ attitudes towards hiring women. This one always stumped me, for it betrayed either a lack of trust in one’s good conduct or a particularly unhealthy view of the other.
The notable aspect with the above rationales — including the ones not mentioned that are but similar in content and spirit — was how casually they were uttered, how totally their “truth” was believed, and how no plentitude of contrary facts could dent them. The matter was ideological, you see; the real reason was good-old sexism.
Excluding women carried some cheap dividends for men. This could be made out in middle-manager behaviour in meetings that happened to be men-only. Using abuses and cuss words, yelling, gossiping, and even farting — all good behaviour came out with aplomb here, making me wonder if what men really wanted from their workplace was a recreation of the atmosphere of a college-boys’ hostel.
For this aim, men are also not averse to creating men-only forums inside workplaces. This happens in the way of informal WhatsApp groups. I recall one with 250+ members, called Life@[Company Name]. All the group’s members were men, and when I pointed out that the group should be called Male_Life@[Company Name], I was ridiculed. Later, the flurry of wife jokes on that group offended me, and when I again pointed out that women must be included in the group and such humour booted out, a colleague responded by saying that he liked his “freedom” in the group, and that the informal group would lose its charm if female colleagues joined. This, an open declaration that women cramped men’s style, was astonishing to me, but there was nothing for me to do other than give up on the fight (one couldn’t leave the group, and I couldn’t afford to leave the job).
Such exclusion from informal networks at work stays invisible, but perhaps does more harm, for it curtails access to some of the organic perks of the job — community, belonging, banter and gossip. It forces women at work to limit their networks, which in turn becomes a feedback loop into the male manager’s bias engine.
Organisations need to educate their leaders better, for the middle-management festival of sexism is as much a problem as the famous glass ceiling above it. There were some leaders in that WhatsApp group who saw the whole exchange and stayed silent. They should have done better.
Solanki is an author, most recently, of Manjhi’s Mayhem (2022)
