Gender Discrimination had remained a very important yet ignored or I can say suppressed topic so far but it is good to see that today people are talking about it in open forums and getting support from the masses which definitely gives a ray of hope to believe things would change in the long run. To start with I would like to pose a question to myself and to others reading this: “Is gender discrimination a Corporate Concern or actually it is more of a Social Concern?”
I would like to give few examples of how we
react to some of the things we see in our daily lives.
1) A female rider in a Royal Enfield on
the road: “Wow see the girl, she’s driving Royal Enfield”
2) A female driving a car fast: “Look at the
girl she’s smart to drive the car so fast”
3) A Stay at home Daddy: Rolled eyes! Or
Probably How lucky is his wife!!!
4) A man cooking his own lunch to
office: “You cook at home? How lucky is your wife”
5) A man changing baby diapers: “Wow he
is so cute, how lucky is his wife”
I can go on. But let us ponder to shake our
heads in agreement to have one of these thoughts cropping up every time we are
spectators of any such situation. None of the comments above are wrong or
hurting but they are all biased. Is there a rule book with definitions such as
bikers can only be males? Or lucky is the girl to have a husband who shares the
responsibilities of the family equally? Sometimes we don’t even realize that we
are being biased towards a gender when it comes naturally. And that is the
problem in itself.
Yes we all know males and females are two
different genders and their characteristics are different. But who decides
which gender is better? Or which gender is more important? Or which gender is
more efficient? Or which gender should be paid more? I know these questions
remain unanswered always and will lead to a lot of debates which can take ugly
turns. But my point here is; it is not a question of how bad it is to be biased
or what causes gender biases. The point I would like to make here is let’s try
to be fair, fair in our actions and in our thoughts, without giving a chance to
someone to question our ethics. It doesn’t need a body to decide that gender
biases are wrong and should be stopped. But to my greatest surprise this is
happening. To make the highly educated class understand the fact that giving
more to someone just because he is a male is wrong. Isn’t that strange? We
claim to be the CEO’s and are seen heading many Business Units in many successful
organizations in the world, but we have failed to judge a very basic fact of
life that a person is good or bad at his/her job not because of his or her
gender but because of his or her capability. It sounds quite weird to me that
the corporate giants with such knowledge and success rates have failed to
figure this out which was going on from so long; but that’s the truth. At least
the statistics say so. And so we are raising our voices and signing petitions
and what not to make ourselves vocal so that we are treated equally to our male
counterparts. It is indeed disturbing to me at least to realize this.
I have been in the IT industry for more than
a decade now and it would be wrong to say I haven’t experienced this. In most
interviews I have been asked about my marital status and family details to
decide how many hours I can give to office. While as an interviewer, I have
found it difficult to convince on more than one occasion as to why I wanted to
select a girl because she was technically far better than her male counterpart
in the interview just because my manager thought the girl would be getting
married soon and would need leaves. When the organization decided and to roll
out a policy on girls not staying at office beyond 7 pm in the evening without
manager’s approval due to security reasons I have heard my male colleagues
commenting how being females we try to exploit the rules yet demand
for equality. When I took a month’s break between job shifts I have heard from
my male colleagues on how it doesn’t matter to me as anyway my husband is
working and I work only for pocket money. On occasions when I have shared my
view of missing my 1 year old daughter while I am at office, I have heard my
male colleagues comment on how I am not a good mother for having decided to
continue to work leaving my child at home. All these have made me react at
times and ignore most of the times. Can someone tell me for how long can we be
quiet?
Nothing can be done about changing it until
the mindset changes, the mindset that stops employers from hiring females
because they might get married and have kids and reasons like this. None of us
come with a guarantee when you recruit us, be it a male or a female. Yes when a
female employee gets married there is a chance that she leaves the place and
goes in order to be with her husband if he is in a different location. Yes
there is a chance that once a female employee has a kid she leaves her job in
order to be with her kid. But that doesn’t mean we cannot hire her. Rather the
organizations can have policies to help her retain her job, policies which
encourage a couple to work in the same organization which might give an
opportunity to the male counterpart to shift bases to where his wife resides.
Organizations can make policies that give woman full support during her post
pregnancy days; by working in shifts, from home, take more leaves, by funding
few day-cares or pre-schools near office premises.
But solutions can only be thought if
only one realizes that there is a problem. Since most organizations are male
dominated and they think only about the P&L at the end of the day, it’s a
difficult job to have everyone come under the same UMBRELLA which says “SAY NO
TO GENDER BIASES”.
Let’s first try to understand the plain and
simple fact of life that there are males and there are females and just because
you are a male doesn’t mean you are better. You need to exhibit certain
qualities to be better that benefits the organization and society as a whole.
And one of the qualities that make you better than others is when you know and
understand the fact of respecting an individual for the qualities he/she has
and not based on his/her gender.
