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 qual access, equal participation, and an equal voice in communication technologies has, for long, been the rallying cry of cyber-feminists. On these three counts, the tech sector in India is lagging far behind. In most organisations, women constitute less than ten per cent of the work force and of these a large number are employed in front desk rather than managerial or tech positions. One is not implying that the tech sector has deliberately conspired to keep women out. In fact, an investigation by the AssureConsulting.com team reveals that most HR managers are keen to hire more women but rue at their failure to do so. An examination of the reasons for the failure, naturally, leads to the question: Why it is difficult to find women employees? Although the have deeper social implications they also point a finger at the industry.
Roland Barthes, the French philosopher, in his famous essay "Toys", purports gender stereotypes come into existence in childhood and are reflected in the very toys parents give children to play - Barbie dolls for the young girl and mechanised motor cars for the male child are reflective of future phpirations from children of either sex and the beginning of the digital divide. The choice of toys suggests that logical and rational thinking, qualities associated with geekiness are exclusively male and women are primarily nurturers, caregivers and homemakers. The boundaries may not be as rigid, but the effects of this insidious socialisation not only through toys but textbooks, media and the world around the child are visible in early adulthood. Consider this: Why a typical MCA class has no more than 10 per cent of the students are girls? Why is the population of girl students high in departments of Social Sciences and Humanities? These ratios obviously get reflected in the tech industry's recruitment patterns. From the HR managers of companies, we interviewed; the highest ratio of women employees was in IndTelesoft, which topped the list with 33 per cent women in its work force. The ratios in other companies are rather dismal. Shobha Krishna of Purple Yogi admits that of 25 employees, three are women. Similarly, Samsung has hired two women of a total of 22 people, a ratio which its HR manager Vaishnavi M Vijay Kumar terms "unfortunate."
Although it is not in the tech sector's hands to singularly resolve gender inequities, is not entirely non-culpable. As an integral part of larger society, the tech sector is shaped by and in turn reflects dominant power structures of society such as patriarchy. Despite adopting feminine qualities of nurture and care towards employees and its progressive and liberal image in many areas, the industry has (un)consciously internalised larger social biases and thus become the playground for enactment and perpetuation of gender inequities. Lip service to gender equality is rarely followed with practical action and services for employees. For instance, women working in the tech sector, especially older women who are married, have to constantly juggle between roles as homemakers, mothers, wives and employees. The priorities imposed on women by society need not be explicated. Few companies have specific HR policies to help women balance out the contradictory pulls between the home and the work place. Most companies have shied away from practical steps such as in-house crèches. A middle-aged woman engineer this writer knows was forced to go home late afternoon to peck her school-going child, wait till her husband or back and put in extra hours in the evening.
Most HR managers cite the low women ratio and the young age of employees to suggest that such policies were unviable. While this could be true of start-ups, big companies surprisingly use the same argument. The argument is impractical as it suggests that either women need not work or worse spouses of women who work need not participate in upbringing of children. Large ratio of men in the company does not men that all male employees are unmarried and hence in-house crèches a non-productive expense. The concept of paternity leave, moreover, is largely absent and where it exists the maximum period tends to be no more than a period of seven days, suggesting that childcare is the sole preserve of women. Consequently most women techies have to give up a minimum of three years of their professional life once they chose to have children. And three years is equivalent to a lifetime in the tech industry, where obsolescence sets in every three months. "It's an uphill take to upgrade one skills, re-enter the industry and ensure that neither work nor children are neglected," says Sunaina Ganpathy working in a software company in Hyderabad.
Unlike Sunaina, most women employees would rather suffer in silence than name the problem. Janet Sayers author of Biological Politics argues most working women face a dilemma, as they have fought theories of biological determinism to win a niche and prove themselves in the work place. Now, they cannot resort to biology to seek special privileges. Hence women feel they have no right to complain. But for the working women in India whose fate is hanging in he balance between self-fulfillment and her social role and the scales are unfairly and threateningly tilted in favour of the latter, a little help from the management could help her maintain the equilibrium.
So far, training and retention of key employees have been the focus of HR department. Instead of treating expenses on practical policies oriented towards women as wasteful expenditure, organisations could use such policies imaginatively to build an unparalleled global equity among women. In a short span, they've proved to be more responsible and loyal employees.
Useful sites:
www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/WomensStudies/fc/fcwebit.htm
www.womenspace.ca
www.awsem.com
crux.astr.ua.edu/4000WS/summary.shtml
www.witi.com/index-c.shtml
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