30 WOMEN IN POWER: THEIR VOICES, THEIR STORIES
Naina Lal Kidwai (editor)
Maven Rupa
293 pages; Rs 500
In an email to his employees on International Women's Day this year, Infosys Chief Executive Vishal Sikka wrote: "Every time I am at Mysore (Infosys campus), I am reminded of the fact that more than half our trainees are women. Then, I look at our executive teams and realise almost none of them made their way up there. Something happened during the journey from Mysore to management - and we lost our leverage over half of humanity." Mr Sikka was drawing attention to the meagre number of women who are seen in senior positions.
In corporate India alone, nearly 48 per cent of women drop out of the workforce mid-career. But a small percentage does make it. 30 Women in Power: Their Voices, Their Stories, edited by Naina Lal Kidwai, executive director of HSBC Asia Pacific, is a collection of personal stories told in the words of women who did rise to the top.
So how did they achieve this feat?
Ms Kidwai says she culls out from their stories "six keys to success" and some "tricks of the trade" such as "passion is essential", "ambition is not necessarily bad", "humility is a hallmark of success", "time management is an art well learnt" and so on. That's a bit problematic, because these seem to offer a formula for success and oversimplify the challenges a vast majority of women professionals in various sectors face.
Also problematic is the use of the word "Nirbhaya" (coined by the myopic media) for the victim of the brutal rape in December 2012 as Ms Kidwai explains how the book came about. The term, while it lauds the victim's bravery, detracts from the burning issue of women's security in India. Ms Kidwai writes that three weeks after the widely reported 2012 rape, when she was appointed president of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, foreign dignitaries and CEOs from around the world would often ask her about the state of women in India. Nobody seemed to be looking at the "good stories about women in this country".
Through 30 Women in Power, she draws attention to precisely such stories of success and achievements. But for the slightly bothersome introduction, these real-life stories of women, not all of whom come from privileged backgrounds, dwell on the challenges and the hurdles they faced and how they tapped into their strengths and worked hard - often harder than the men because being women they were expected to first prove themselves as professionals - to rise up the ladder.
It's a good mix. There are bankers, of course - Chanda Kochhar (ICICI), Arundhati Bhattacharya (State Bank of India), Kaku Nakhate (Bank of America Merrill Lynch) and Ms Kidwai herself. And there are diplomats (Nirupama Rao), consultants (Anjali Bansal), lawyers (Pallavi Shroff), IT leaders (Debjani Ghosh), media personalities (Shereen Bhan), businesswomen (Mallika Srinivasan), NGO activists (Sunita Narain) and others.
In most of the stories, the common thread, the one that held together their lives - personal and professional - is family support. Ms Kidwai makes this point with an exclamation mark when she writes, "Choose your husband well!" Ms Ghosh, who is Intel India's first woman managing director in South Asia, goes to the extent of calling marriage "one of the most vital career decisions". It's an important tip, a practical one that speaks of the reality of the society in which we live.
The poignant story of Vijayalakshmi Iyer, the chairman and managing director of the Bank of India, shows how critical family support is to a woman's success. Born into a family of four brothers and two sisters and living in a cramped 500-sq-ft apartment in Mumbai, all Ms Iyer wanted was a job immediately after she graduated to be able to support her father in shouldering the responsibility of the large family. She started out with a salary of Rs 250 in a private sector electric company, but soon applied to the Union Bank of India that had sought applications for clerks and officers. As she rose up the hierarchy, she confronted her life's biggest challenge - the loss of her husband, barely 40, to cancer. "I was devastated and felt completely at a loss about my future," she writes. The person who stepped in to guide her was her mother-in-law.
These are women who also learnt to deal with the rampant gender bias that confronted them at various stages of life. For example, Biocon Chairman and Managing Director Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw would often be in a situation where people would refuse to loan her money because she was a woman. And clients would rather wait for her lawyer husband than have Pallavi Shroff fight their case.
The degree to which these immensely successful women have had to push themselves to reach where they have is by no means small. Ms Kochhar of ICICI, for example, would try to trick time by literally achieving 48 hours of work in a 24-hour day. "While making a 'day trip' on official work from Mumbai to New York, she catches a late-night flight" to reach New York before sunrise, "has back-to-back meetings, takes the flight back home the same night, and heads straight to the ICICI office. While it appears as though she has been away just three days, it's actually two days because of the time difference," writes Ms Kidwai.
In the pages of 30 Women in Power are many practical lessons for women professionals - on time management, people management and striking that critical work-life balance that is expected of every woman.
The only trouble is that in page after page, these crucial lessons leap out in bold. And in drawing attention to themselves with such aggression, they pull one away from an important and well-written narrative.
