Warning: This article may cause a serious harm to the emotions of someone who is not a feminist and hence doesn’t believe in equal rights for both genders. Discontinue reading immediately.
This morning, I had the opportunity to fight the Bombay Rains like every morning and reach work on time. Ignore the fact that I live five minutes away from the office.
When I entered, I saw four women smiling at me, completely settled into their chairs and already discussing skin care and lunch goals. Men were yet to reach our office. These women had gone through their morning, handled the early morning Mumbai ‘bai’ hour, cleaned their personal spaces, ate breakfast (hopefully- breakfast is really important ladies) . They travelled in trains, buses, rickshaw and uber, basically whatever got them to work the fastest and already finished shooting out their morning emails.
A thought suddenly crossed my mind. My founder and I had a serious gender equality discussion eight months back. I was the only woman in a five people team growing and not getting anywhere close to hiring a woman. The quality of resumes that we were receiving were comparatively stronger from the other gender. This was the case for every position that opened up. We had all kind of evaluations. Maybe we are a tech company and women aren’t excited about that (yes, far away from feminism), or else it could be that I was repelling women (an alternate theory in my colleague’s head). It was mostly because every women that walked through the door during those months failed to impress the clan of men conducting their interview rounds (made up by yours truly). While I was eager to hire a woman for gender equality, I was also in a desperate need of getting women friends at work. Now I would like to write this on behalf of all working and non-working women (considered myself a tomboy for one second and moved on to write the next statement), we women like to give an equal and necessary attention to conversations that men can’t fathom. However, we women also have our own set of conversations besides everything else. Women gel on makeup conversations and some of these conversations can leave life changing impacts on our fellow women (talk about makeovers). Women gel on being fitness enthusiasts, more active if not less than men. Women get along on organisational skills, bitching and loving men, emotions, weddings, periods, body odor . Unlike what some people might believe to think, women work better with other women.
Getting back to our story, couple of months back, we saw the dynamics of our office change. We had a job opening (actually we have one every week -we are a growing startup) and we just knew a woman who would fit right in. We called her and asked if she is up for switching jobs . She began to tell us that her present boss (a Man) was extremely loud, rude and inconsiderate. Didn’t understand the concept of personal days to take care of family and other matters and to our luck, she was looking for a change.
· Plus 1 women now.
Next, we had another opening where we needed someone who is creative and analytical at the same time. Now we can argue about it but I could already sense, the moment this role opened up, that we might soon have three women in our office.
Then came two more women hired to be the super interns. Next women were brought to replace roles primarily held by men. But of course, at this point our fears had started fading out in terms of gender equality at work and our focus was to hire the next best talent. Coincidentally, the next best talents were two women.
· Plus 4 more women now.
Last week, I read an article about ‘GM becomes the first major auto company to hire female CEO and female CFO.’
This GM article in a way puts an end to the thoughts that go around in not consciously looking to hire women which may even cross the mind of a woman HR. It was an Auto Company, an industry renowned for being dominated by men (just like ours). If they had stopped the hope for gender equality long back, they would have never made or got to this historic move. On a personal front, I am really eager to see their balance growth now.
· Plus 1 more women now.
Our learnings to reach here were simple, starting a new company and achieving gender equality is not industry specific. Tech companies too can achieve it. It might be harder to find talent immediately. But with time, if that’s your goal, women will attract other women into the organisation. We as a company have to work harder and create that comfort. I will leave you to the data that shows only 7% women reach the C suite in Tech companies. This happens because the work didn’t start during the inception (ignoring the zillion other reasons and mindsets that are not moving the percentage).
On a lighter note, having women in the office has changed the energy in our work place. Everyone is happier, the conversations have all kind of dynamics, rules are changing as per the comfort for both the genders and the overall productivity is higher.
I wanted to put a screenshot of women sending me messages from work during their periods asking for a sick day. But we women, keep the secrets well — proving that they are equally relieved with the idea of working with me (counter act on colleague’s theory through this statement).
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