Women Leader facing bias and other challenging situations in their professional journey is a shared experience for women across the globe. Women around the world, juggle their personal and professional lives, the repercussions of which are evident in women’s underrepresentation in the workforce. For the women, who do make it to into the workforce, roadblocks such as Gender Bias, Pay Gaps, Lack of Support etc are omnipresent. Yet women professionals are standing intrepidly and tackling all the challenges like warriors.
What helps in their journey is the advice that comes from fellow women leaders who in the same boat. One such insightful conversation was had during the third day of the 27th Edition of Bengaluru Tech Summit 2024 (BTS). A women-centric panel discussion took place at the Bangalore Palace where women leaders shared their experience and advice on building successful careers and more.
With moderator Chandra R. Srikanth, the Deputy Executive Editor, moneycontrol.com, there were three panellists that included Priya Mohan, the Investor at General Catalyst; Ipsita Dasgupta, the Managing Director of HP India Market; and Sandhya Devanathan, the Vice President & Head at Meta India.
Welcoming the three panellists, Chandra articulated on the topic of discussion i.e., ‘Women in Leadership’, welcoming all the guests and audience.
Overcoming Sticky Floors: Conquering Bias & Self-Doubt
The first topic to be discussed was women leaders’ experience with breaking the glass ceiling by overcoming ‘sticky floors’. Sandhya started off the conversation by talking about her 24 years of work experience and how she has dealt with certain situations which she termed as ‘sinking floor’.
Explaining about a particular instance, Sandhya said that people often talk about pay gap between men and women. She went on to explain that she has faced many instances where she actually found out that her earning of 80 cents to the dollar for what a man doing a similar job as her was making.
She said, “I did that in retail banking because I used to sign off on credit card limits, and I was running retail banking at a company. Then I found that my male counterparts, because I had to approve their credit limits, were making $100 while I was making 80 cents for exactly the same role.”
Shedding light on what she did to tackle those situations, Sandhya revealed going for hard conversations and realising that “if it was to me, then it would also be probably to be systemic”. Undertaking reviews, she being a lead at that time found out that entry points were different and less negotiation, it builds up overtime. So, she corrected the sticky floor to “just data points”.
Navigating Moments of Feeling Unsupported or Misunderstood
Discussing about the moments of being unsupported or misunderstood, Priya Mohan gave a contrarian view stating about having good support all throughout her life. She explained about being a leader and how lonely the experience actually is. However, despite having multiple responsibilities, she still manages everything with the support of her husband and family.
Voicing on a life philosophy that she has learnt over the years, Priya said, “The philosophy I practice is the fact that you have to be extremely focused on what you want to prioritize, be very clear on the trade off and stop going back and constantly worrying about it because you will never get peace of mind. What I want to solve for is hyper learning.”
She continued by saying that she wants to solve for being in the table and once that philosophy is applied in life, “you won't take a three-year view, you take a 10-year view. And that's personally helped me a lot.”
Balancing Confidence and Conditioning
On Ipsita’s take for how she battles guilt day in and day out, she referred Sandhya and Priya’s response on having support and ecosystems that conspires to make them successful. Stating hard fact, she expressed her disappointment on having “lowest women participation in the workforce in the entire world.”
She said, “I think what's key in this is the idea of even as you know yourself and as people around you interact with you, you know more. I walk into a room and I don't realize I'm the only woman because I'm not looking at myself. So, if I walk into a room where half the people are women based on the industries I've been in, it'll be a shocking route. However, what I do know, and I have done over time because I recognize that there is this difference of the way women are perceived and men are perceived. And I think it's especially true in our country.”
Having spent several years in China and working there, while growing up in States has helped Ipsita differentiate between the atmosphere in India and other countries. According to her, she says that she can now see the difference in “how much is expected of us, how nurturing we're supposed to be, etc.”
Since she has played a lot with her style, she also suggests the women who have become new managers to play with their style.
Conclusion
Talking over on different topics, three of the panellists also discussed about dealing with menopause stating “there are a billion women globally that are going to be in menopause over the next decade or so.” Concluding the panel, the panellists and the moderator also underscored the requisition of normalizing parenting and maternal and infant parenting so that women can continue to be in the workforce even after going through major life stages.
