“Finally, we will see a pregnant consultant on these floors,” my female friend and I exchanged notes only half jokingly.
It was 2008, the India maternity leave policy was still at 12 weeks, and jokes about over-spending wives and hardworking husbands were literally the ONLY staples at the cafeteria.
It did something to me, the abject lack of women above me. I clutched at straws, whoever I could find.
The twin-mother Consultant. The back-ache ridden Director. The sabbaticaled Senior. The PTM-attending Partner.
It was important to find role models, women who had it all, more importantly who’d done it all. The 20 something me refused to agree with Indra Nooyi, that women cannot have it all.
I think I grudgingly agree with her point today.
Something always gives. Sometimes, it is the career. Other times, just peace of mind.
But that ain’t the point of today’s post.
It’s about role models. And inspirations. The kind of people I see and go, ‘If they have done it, I can’.
No, I am not talking about mentors, successful men and women at the workplace who guide me, gently nudging me down paths hitherto untraveled.
I am talking about taking courage from the stories around me, the people who drive ahead, navigating through all the constraints life throws at them, like a car squeezing amidst the auto rickshaws at the Saki Naka signal and coming out unscathed. (Consider yourself very lucky if this place sounds alien to you).
And, that courage doesn’t come from seeing senior men, super senior men, moving geographies and industries with aplomb, while their children are being raised in the comforts of home by their wives.
A bolster to my goals comes not from seeing men extensively networking into the wee hours of the morning, winning over internal support and external stakeholders, while the kids get to sleep in the bosom of their mothers, SAHMs as they are called.
So? So what, you ask me.
I don’t know. I have tried. I have actively sought out women in senior places, women, who, like me, had babies that grew up into kids and then into young adults, while they worked in the corporate world. Office-going women, who, magically, didn’t un-nurture their kids, if there’s such a word. And it has given me some strength, to see how they did it, however difficult it has been.
But, suddenly, it turns out I am that woman. Older, if not wiser, holding on to a career like a raft in a river gushing downstream, learning swimming on the go, jumping through the spiky hoops that being female throws at me.
I remember. I am not here to tell girls behind me that they have it easier, that they should be less ambitious, they should think about their biological clock. I am here as an illustration, that life can be fashioned in many ways and my way of fashioning it could be one of them.
Are you that older woman? What have you done recently that a young woman would feel positive about, even inspired by?
Are you that younger girl? What do you think we, the ones around you, above you, ahead of you, can do to reinforce the faith in you, that a life of your own, a career of your own, with / without marriage, with / without kids, is doable and enjoyable too?
P. S. Views strictly personal.