The Other Side of Women Empowerment

Back in the 1980s, when I had just about begun to understand world politics, two strong women were at the helm of their respective parliaments – one, often referred to as the “Iron Lady”, Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the other, famously known as the “only man in the parliament”, Indira Gandhi was the Prime Minister of India. Along with these two women who had a deep impact on my mind, there was a third one at home – my mother – who shaped my personality and provided a springboard to catapult me into the future as an independent woman. Those were the days when women's liberation, feminism, gender equality, etc. were fast catching on and I was happily lapping up this information through the dozens of newspapers and magazines that found their way to our house every week. Inspired by these women and their movements, I started collecting newspaper clippings on anything and everything that sounded even remotely like women's empowerment. I wrote essay after essay on women and their achievements and what I thought they should do to really empower themselves.

My mother, however; continued to be the single biggest source of inspiration. The way she finely balanced her work and life was clearly reflected in the way she balanced herself on her bicycle wearing a saree with two kids on the carrier behind her riding at breakneck speed on days when we were late going to school. Her love for speed and the ability to balance herself as she eventually graduated onto mopeds and scooters continued till she was well over the age of 60. It continues even today as she celebrates her 77th birthday on 17th December – except for riding bikes and scooters, the speed remains and so does the balance.

My mother is a math wizard and all the math that I learned, I learned from her. Throughout her school and college life, she scored a 100 in math every single time. Even today when I go to her for advice with numbers, she calculates everything using algebra. It's all about finding the value of “x”. And when she has time to kill, she slays it by solving complicated math problems from high school textbooks or the most complicated sudokus that she can get her hands on. I was particularly perplexed when I saw a book titled “Revenge of the Ninja Sudoku” in her collection and I just couldn’t get my head around it. She always wanted to be an engineer, my mother. However, the 1950s were hardly known for supporting widespread women’s education. So, while she was allowed to graduate, she had to stick to the conservative “biological sciences” which were deemed to be fit for women and take up the profession of a school teacher which has always remained a women-dominated area since women are considered to be better when dealing with children – cliché.

All through her life though, she continued to be this fiercely independent woman who never stopped me from following my dreams. She was always ahead of her times and encouraged me to be radically different too. I thus entered the workforce with exactly these thoughts in mind. And to be very honest, the very first hurdle in my way was thrown by a woman.

If I look back today and analyze the difficulties that I faced in my career, who put me down, and who pulled me up, I see that there is a fair number of men as well as women who can be categorized in both sections. It kind of skews this whole women empowerment idea – this is my opinion based on my experience – and I realized that empowerment should ideally be gender-neutral. It doesn’t matter whether you are a man, a woman, or anyone belonging to the rainbow community. You need to empower the one who deserves it and has it in them to make it big. You need to be fair and treat everyone equally.

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Many a time during my career, I have attended and addressed forums on women empowerment and women in leadership. I have heard women talk about how they are better equipped to deal with stressful situations, have a higher emotional quotient, can strike a fine work-life balance, etc. But what about the barriers that we have created for ourselves? Who is going to break those? Are men solely responsible for creating that glass ceiling? Or do some of them actually play the role of a support system in our journey towards empowerment? What I have learned as a woman in the corporate world is that not all women out there will stand up for you and not all men out there are waiting to pull you down – sometimes it’s the other way round.

So, whether you have learned math from your mom and cooking from your dad (probably the reason I cook like I am experimenting in a science lab), I guess it is?time to put away all gender biases and just be unapologetically, unequivocally, unabashedly, equal.?

#theothersidebyaparna #womenempowerment #genderequality