Open letter to Chetan Bhagat on his TOI Article on women 'Don't worry be happy'

Chetan,
Insulted! - Yes, that's what I felt after reading your column 'Don't worry, Be happy' that has been lapped up with great gusto as an inspirational article. While preaching against the 'regressive attitude' of the Indian society, you conveniently forget that you are peddling the same garbage in a shiny package.

You say // It would be a universe full of messy, aggressive and ego-maniacal males running the world, trying to outdo each other for no particular reason. There would be body odour, socks on the floor and nothing in the fridge to eat. The entertainment industry would die. Who wants to watch movies without actresses?//  

Touche. Did you actually write that to make women feel indispensable! Should I feel proud with this new found wisdom that the world might collapse without women titillating men on screen, cooking food for men or picking up after men?

As a child, I noticed most of the women in the family embracing life as handmaids to their husbands to please the society.  They wanted women to work too but  women were rated on how well they cleaned up their homes, how well they could cook and how selflessly they played their role as a cook, maid, nurse, teacher, nanny and attendant in addition to their work lives. Sadly they never realized that they could choose to set their own boundaries and scale the ones planted before them. 

Nobody hands over freedom on a platter. A woman needs to make that choice and it's not easy. Upsetting customs always tags the woman the worst way possible. The society will form opinions, ostracize, and even start rumors because the world hates/fears that it doesn't understand. But it is possible. A knowledge of a life beyond role plays gives power. And it requires breaking free from the customs not negotiating the conditions of captivity. These articles that encourage patriarchy in various forms are trivializing the cause. 

Chetan, you compartmentalize men as aggressive and powerful, women as submissive and your solution is learning some aggression from the men. Do you think that the solution is giving it back to the Mother in law? Courage is not about being mean to people. And women don't really need to mimic the stereotyped version of men to be powerful. A decision to choose beyond 'what people think' would get a woman control over her life. A blanket rule of 'giving it back' is a wasteful energy leak. It's equal to a blanket rule of not confronting people at all - both different versions of cowardice. Also, while you are at this new Feminist Avatar, please take a course on gender neutral language. You assume that all the bosses are men // tell him that, or quit//

Your solutions: //Give it back to that mother-in-law…. if you are doing a good job at work and your boss doesn't value you - tell him that, or quit… It is okay if you don't make four dishes for lunch, one can fill their stomach with one. It is okay if you don't work until midnight and don't get a promotion. ….. Someone will make a better scrapbook for her school project than you. Another will lose more weight with a better diet. Your neighbour may make a six-dabba tiffin for her husband, you don't - big deal // 

If we desire a truly egalitarian society, we need to overthrow the system of role plays- woman as the maid and the man as the leader. It should be OK if a woman chooses to be a home maker and it should be OK for a man to make that choice as well. If both choose to work, it shouldn't be indispensable for the woman to do 4 jobs- maid, nanny, cook and a career woman. She deserves a shot at success in her career just as the man. And that necessitates equal sharing of responsibilities. It’s not enough to delegate the chopping veggies job to the hubby or cook one meal instead of four. The household chores are theirs to begin with-not hers alone.  

Square pegs in round holes? -The gender equation @ work

The woman, they say, has come a long way. She is no longer a nameless consort in the harem, a witch hanged in the Middle Ages or a house wife who could not vote because the world after all is a gentleman’s game. The question is ‘Have we done enough?

Why take the 'gender' factor seriously when the world is rife with major divisions and classes of discrimination ? I am yet to read a story of infanticide triggered by the infant’s caste, creed or religion. Gender is the quintessential factor that determines an infant’s right to live in most villages in India. It is still the determining factor while choosing an educational path and more times than not, the freedom of 'choice' itself. Financial freedom could help. But that is a tricky road too. Women contribute to more than 50% of the graduates passing out of major Universities but the figures in the corporate world in terms of women leadership is nothing to be proud of.

Women in the workforce come from different backgrounds, some hammered with the 'women as a ‘helper’, not the ‘leader’' ideology and identifying with the success of other women is important for most of them. An interesting study states that 64% of women in US see the absence of women role models as a barrier and 77% of women believe that their career development faces barriers. Ironically, some women who find success have a propensity to promote men than women and many women leaders succeed because of male mentors.  So this is not really about women fighting for women but rather about men and women who choose to change the rules to build an egalitarian work space. Does it bear results? Yes!

1. Women Matter

A McKinsey study of 101 companies showed that those with three or more women in senior management scored higher, on average, for each organisational criterion than companies with no women at the top.

Corporate performance increased ‘significantly’ upon attaining critical mass (at least three women on management committees with an averagemembership of ten people).

Another McKinsey study of 89 listed European companies showed that there is likely to be a correlation between the number of women inleadership and good financial performance:

11.4% return on equity compared with an average of 10.3%

EBIT operating result of 11.1% against an average of 5.8%

Stock price growth of 64% against the average of 47% over the period 2005–2007

2. Women Matter 2

A later McKinsey study, known as Women Matter 2,produced in 2008, established five leadership behaviours where women performed better than men:

Participative decision making: Building a team atmosphere in which everyone is encouraged to participate in decision making.

Role model: Being a role model, focusing on building respect and considering the ethical consequences of decisions.

Inspiration: Presenting a compelling vision of the future and inspiring optimism about its implementation.

Expectations and rewards: Defining expectations and responsibilities clearly and rewarding achievement of targets.

People development: Spending time teaching, mentoring, and listening to individual needs and concerns.

Men performed better than women in the areas 'Individualistic decision making' and 'Control and corrective action' and both men and women performed equally on 'Intellectual stimulation' and 'Efficient Communication'. We cannot say that women make better leaders than men just as we cannot say that men are better leaders. Men are good at 'being men' as women are good at 'being women'. Men and women are different with different standards. We need both so that the company could imbibe diverse standards to build a better corporate model. We need both to reinforce the collective strengths and mitigate the collective weaknesses unique to the respective genders.

You can download the Mickensay reports on women from 2007 to 2010 here

The success of the women workforce is also about the success of the company at large. If the Industry workforce is still predominantly men, women would have to play by those rules. It’s like trying to fit square pegs in round holes. How can a company succeed if the women cannot? How can the women succeed if they are not represented enough? How can they represent if they are not hired?

The butterfly effect demonstrates how small changes in the initial stage can cause major changes in the outcome, for example, the presence or absence of a butterfly flapping its wings could lead to creation or absence of a hurricane. Every small step that we take in the direction of an inclusive work place will change the rules and the world as we know it will change with that too.