Are women not multi-tasking?

A woman is the epitome of sacrifice, care and love. Despite being so, they are considered to be weak compared to men. A woman plays Different role of an obedient daughter, a caring sister, a loving wife and a responsible mother simultaneously. Besides they are equally energetic in their working field these days. After managing all ups and down in family a woman is capable enough to handle her work equally. But their silent sacrifices are overlooked by most of the people and they get portrayed as the secondary part of the society. Rather their multitasking ability makes men to suffer in inferiority complex. Women often are generalized by their gender in workplace. According to Dr Wing Lam, Vice Chancellor of GlobalNxt University, “Women do not under-perform if you compare them to men, in fact the generalization itself cannot be drawn by gender. Taking the instance of my own university, I would point out that we have good number of women among our senior faculty, and they manage to balance their work life pretty well with their personal life”

A woman, who is suffered in various sectors because of her gender 364 days of the year, feels honoured on 8th March of every year. This day is known as International Women’s Day. This day is celebrated to encourage their capability and to give respect to all the women. Taking the history of Mother Terssa, Rani Laxmi Bai, Indira Gandhi into the account, we can proceed with many names of successful women till today. The emerging willing power of today’s women is really commendable.
In spite of facing numerous troubles in family they are successful to deal with their jobs, or vice versa. But still the organisations show reluctance to adjust with their schedule, which leads the women to face difficulties in managing their personal and professional life together. According to IV Rajashree, a few initiatives at both office and home environments will ensure women’s active role in the corporate world. She came up with some solution as she herself succeeds in managing both family and working life. “Work from home is now a norm but definitely with clarity in expectations and deliverables. The telecommuting model works for many of the management roles but not operational or production level roles where the workflows demand co-location or a specific client environments which cannot be accessed from home. This is one of the reasons why functional roles are mostly preferred by women. Also show a career/ growth path on how they can come back into the mainstream after they have taken a break. Often options of work from home, flexible timings tend to make it a ‘job’ and not a career option. I think it is also important some of these policies need to be gender neutral as the assumption is based on a traditional family setup with a nuclear family structure. It is quite possible that this may be a need even for men who are single fathers or those who work remotely, says Rajashree.”

For instance some quit their jobs after maternity as the companies fail to cooperate with them by providing comfortable working hours; hence companies lose experienced employees. In this context Archana Bisht, Director of 1to 1help says, “Nearly 43% of women quit their jobs post maternity. It has been observed that most working women would rather not quit their jobs but do so because managing home & career becomes a huge challenge which they find difficult to cope with. As a result, it is important to ensure that organisations put in place solid maternity policies that benefit both the women and the organisation”. She asked for requirements of having concrete maternity policy in the organisation to fight such issue. She added, “Companies should allow for more flexible work hours for new mothers, extended sabbatical and should give them the option of working from home. Companies should also look at having crèches at the workplace.”

Most of them do not get demoralised because they know the meaning of ‘adjustment’ and make themselves engaged in some other work. The continuous strength to adjust is really praiseworthy. Rather the multitasking ability is found more among women than men. Thus generalizing by gender does not make sense, according to Dr. Wing Lam, VC of GNU, which has launched a ‘women leadership program’. While talking about this program he says, “We run women’s leadership programs for some companies in India, like ATOS, Infosys and Crompton Greaves. I feel these programs are important because they allow women to talk and share their stories and experiences. There is a need for more diversity in many different organisations. I think managing diversity, and by diversity, I don’t mean male and female, there’s also people from different cultures, different backgrounds and age groups. So, managing diversity is a key challenge for organisations, it’s not just about gender.”

Hence the equality is required to maintain a healthy work environment. Success will come when people from professional world and society will stop judging based on gender. All these trouble can be solved if the if the men women both share their daily work equally, instead of imposing both personal and professional work on women.