Gender equality cuts both ways

SWOT

This may sound carping and ungracious but every time a corporation decides to confer special awards on women entrepreneurs and employees, they unconsciously do the cause of women in the workplace a signal disservice.

Let me hasten to clarify that there is no doubt that the intention is quite the opposite and perfectly honourable "" if sometimes, as in the case of two rival white goods multinationals, somewhat unabashedly commercial.

The problem is that such well-meaning exercises "" which proliferate on such occasions as Women's Day "" end up singling out women as some sort of special category of beings.

Should any of this matter? And does it harm the cause of women in the workplace? Yes to both questions, and here is why. Women executives are still a minority in Indian corporations, more so in the upper echelons of management.

A dipstick study of 35 companies by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), titled 'Making corporates (sic) women friendly,' conducted last year across sectors revealed that men constituted 73 per cent of the organisations surveyed.

Not unexpectedly, it was in services "" IT, banking, media, travel and advertising "" that the employment of women is concentrated. Women accounted for 20 to 35 per cent of employment in such companies. In manufacturing, they accounted for less than 10 per cent, in many cases below 5 per cent.

Even within the relatively high-employment sectors, 60 to 70 per cent of women executives were concentrated in administrative jobs or at junior levels. Within senior management, women accounted for just 10 to 20 per cent. At top levels, the study observed, participation was 'limited or absent'.

What these numbers suggest is that women are a long way yet from becoming an integral and automatically accepted component of corporate India. Thus, according them 'special and differential' (SND) treatment "" to subvert a World Trade Organisation term "" in terms of performance only highlights differences when, in all fairness, none should exist.

There is everything to be said for promoting the cause of the girl child in primary and maybe secondary education to eliminate the evils of negative discrimination that skew social development.

But once educated women enter the corporate world, their best chance of acceptance and genuine progress would be to compete on equal terms. Affirmative action based on gender has little place in a competitive environment.

More seriously, the 'SND' practice tends to act as a psychological brake on their acceptability and assimilation as an integral part of the work-force. This was clearly evident in the feedback from companies that the CII study garnered.

Not to put too fine a point on it, women employees were resented for the special privileges they're accorded, for instance, in terms of accommodation for transfers and 'favoured locations'. The eye-opening part was that women themselves were unhappy with such treatment too.

It would be fair to say that much of the tokenism has its roots in the somewhat tactless activism that has developed around women's issues. It is this kind of thinking, for instance, that has prompted the ill-judged proposed amendment to the Companies Act to provide for a quota for women on corporate boards.

There can be no justification for compulsory gender-based participation in an institution where ability is a major criterion for qualification.

It is clear, however, that corporations do need to address the issue of women in the workplace creatively for the very practical reason that they may be depriving themselves of a large talent pool.

The solution, of course, lies in creating an enabling environment. The CII survey shows that 80 to 90 per cent of women leave their jobs after they have children and 15 to 20 per cent because they get married.

Clearly, it is the first issue that is a bigger problem. Yet, do corporations address the issue at all? Only partially. Most corporations allow women to club other leave with maternity leave.

But just 13 per cent of them reported on-site day-care facilities for employees' children, although 22 per cent have identified third parties for day care. Overall, 65 per cent of the companies did not have any such facilities at all. Flexi-time was a more frequent practice with 64 per cent of the companies in the survey allowing this practice "" to all employees.

This last point highlights the basic issue: that it is more important for organisations to create enabling environments that account for the legitimate and genuine problems that women face but that do not discriminate against employees on any ground, including gender.

Thus, for instance, it is only fair that sexual harassment rules should provide redress for men as well as women. Or that men employees be entitled to a certain amount of paternity leave and so on. Equality, after all, cuts both ways.