Work, womanhood and guilt

(This blog was written by me some years back, but the years have not withered its pertinence)

It was odd, what I was feeling, as my friend, who was down for a visit from the US, discussed with me the breakdown of her marriage, and how she was just co-parenting her daughter with her husband. She says it began fairly early on in their marriage, when she was asked to change her surname to his and she refused. Things went steadily downhill from there on. I could feel the rage tickle the hair in my neck and had to actually tell myself to calm down and hear her out.

I felt seething rage that she went and is still going through this and that her husband has the temerity to demand she change her surname. She remains in the marriage and is civil to him because of her daughter – she wants her to be brought up in a ‘two-parent’ set-up . Before all of you go cluck-clucking, let me say this – my friend is the sole earner of the family. And also supports her aged dad and in-laws. Her husband is the President of an advertising agency owned by himself, which has no clients. Never did in the last 7 years. So, my theory about all equations in relationships being around economics don’t hold here either. That, ladies and gentleman, is how embedded in our psyche our perceptions about gender equality, in the workplace, at home, out on the streets, are.

A few years back, I had gone to work very early and walked out of the bay to the area where the cleaners were still cleaning, and I slipped and fell and careened to the wall and hit it with a thud. Phone to husband, trip to hospital for x-ray, and it was established that I had fractured my coccyx. Very gallantly, I was brought home by him and he declared to my mother and son that I should take bed rest for at least two weeks and no one should ask me to do anything blah blah. So I was quite ceremoniously laid on my bed and he went to freshen up etc. Five minutes later, and I swear it was only five minutes, he comes out and looks at me and says, ” Aren’t you going to serve dinner?” He is a doctor, and a good man, but these things come out of his mouth as though from a spinal level – he does not mean to be this way, is a progressive man, but he does not think. It’s just that he has been conditioned to expect I do the housework.

While in England, in a land and reality removed from the ones we come to the world with, he was interested in cooking, and would often ask me to move out of the kitchen while he cooked up gorgeous looking (and sometimes even tasting) food. But you see, that was England, and everything necessary to make scrumptious meals was readily available and affordable – almond paste, sun-dried tomatoes, cooking wine, you name it. And the weather was wonderful. In the 13 years since we have been back, he has not once gone to the kitchen except to put the plate in the sink. Cooking in a cramped kitchen when the temperature is around 35 degrees at best, is no picnic. And so the lady of the house has to do it. In those odd days when I am too tired, or my mother has not stashed our fridge with food, I tell him to organize and do something, he promptly orders home-delivery.

But. But what irks me most is when we go to a friend’s place and the wife goes to the kitchen to get dinner. He has this annoying habit of telling me, ‘go and help her?’ This totally gets my goat – firstly, because he is showing a concern for the lady when clearly he has none for me, and second, because my thoughts then go like – ‘why don’t you go?I am here because I have been invited and am not budging – you feel it’s a strain on the hostess, go on, help her. I aint going anywhere.

It’s a hard job, being a working woman. And sometimes I am not sure how to balance the way my thoughts go on the topic. Women, it is true, are fickle. First they wanted to be the same as men. And it’s true, they fought long and hard for the right to work as hard as their more hirsute colleagues. And I will be honest, I too have wanted often to wave goodbye to my son in the morning and to come back and smile and read and kiss my son goodnight, knowing everything else has been taken care of.

I have seen women around me, over years, competing to see who could take less maternity leave. As though it were a badge of honor. I went through that phase too, trying not to let a small matter like childcare put me off. I went to the same universities as many men, didn’t I? Got good grades and got chosen whenever I interviewed? Weren’t the scarves and chunris shattering the glass ceilings and flying high? We were efficient and effective and did not need to play golf and drink beer to network, we could just sit and chat and do that.

However, even considering this was true – just because women don’t want to compete with men, it doesn’t mean they want to spend all day pureeing sweet potatoes and competing over which child will be chosen to play Mary. And then again, thinking of it practically, what company would want to employ someone who not only wanted a year off after the birth of each child, but demanded to work 9.30am to 2.30pm, insisted on four months a year at home for the school holidays and disappeared every time one of their children coughed?

But, as one sat through the tenth meeting of the day, women slowly realized that what we have is not necessarily that enjoyable. At some point, one begins to wonder beyond the business plans and technology changes towards sneaking suspicion about whether the child-carer has ensured the food was eaten. Did the toddler sleep well in the afternoon?Is he becoming cranky and is the nanny impatient with the child? If a working mother is not such a big deal, why is it that children wait to hear the footsteps of the mother in the evening and whoop in delight when they see her?

So where does it leave the working mother? Who is really thinking for her and about her? The statistics are startling. The number of women in senior management positions in the 350 biggest companies has fallen by 40 per cent, according to survey done by PricewaterhouseCoopers some years back. This partly explains why, according to the Office of National Statistics (US) figures , the pay gap between men and women has increased. Women are once again the junior employees, secretaries and canteen staff or sidelined part-timers. (This data is not Cognizant-specific but applies to the whole world). It was one thing to aspire to excel at everything, become a scientist or a neurosurgeon, but quite another to be called to attend to an urgent aneurysm in the middle of the night when your child has raging fever and you are half-dead with lack of sleep anyway. And then there are logistical issues.

Good companies know it makes sense to keep women, even if it means organizing job shares, allowing mothers to leave work early or creating new posts for them. Mothers tend to over-compensate by working late when their children are asleep and their male colleagues sitting with the pint of lager to watch the rerun of the soccer match for the n-th time. But most businesses won’t be able to do everything. Women have to co-operate too, realizing that if they take a year’s maternity leave and come back part-time or work from home, they cannot automatically expect the same pay or be able to take off every holiday or watch every football match. If they do, childless colleagues will resent them.

I am probably a terrible mother. No, cancel that. I am a terrible mother, because several years back, when I had to go for work to another city for two days and I was busy organizing food and making sure my son and husband knew where the food and clothes were, I knew i was expected to feel worry but all I felt when I got into the plane was relief. The tremendous relief of not having to think of juggling between office work and making breakfast, of waking up and not having to make food, take the dog out. And the relief – yes mostly this – the relief at not feeling guilty about it, because I had to make this trip, there was no option. Guilt and motherhood are intrinsically related – and people know how to play around with the former to plague the latter. It is not easy to truly recognize and even feel that women have been caught in a catch 22 situation since only the male paradigm is still valued in the economy; so women are told that they failed unless they win in that world exclusively.

But honestly speaking, there are parallel worlds. The answer is not to just live in these silos separately but to finally get the male paradigm to value that care world at home. Value it with status, with tax recognition and empathy. Very frequently, the experience of raising children can actually transfer very usefully into competencies required for several high -end office jobs. Productive work using existing proven technology with sometimes no office site overheads and lots of very flexible workers who can even be called in at peaks can and does work in most cases. Wish more companies recognized it and allowed it.

Mine does, to a good extent.Thankfully