ARTICLE

CREATING AN ENABLING ENVIRONMENT

FOR WOMEN TO SUCCEED IN WORKPLACE











SUBMITTED BY
MAITREE RASTOGI
ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION ENGG
AJAY KUMAR GARG ENGG COLLEGE
GHAZIABAD
Chanda Kocchar ,Shikha Sharma,Naina lal Kidwai,Indira Nooyi,Kiran Mazumdar
Shaw and many more. These are the names of few business women that have
taken the indian work place by storm. The work success of these business women is
applauded and lauded by all and inspires us to learn from their wisdom and
achievements. Indeed, some of these women are heroes!
The Indian women of modern India has explicated in making a separate identity for
herself. She now plays a very crucial role in the society. Whether it is in career
development or in the seamless majestic development of women empowerment, the
Indian woman is emerging as leader with potential. Women are fast bridging the gap,
they are moving shoulder to shoulder with their male counterparts.

Women still have a challenge to make what men make for the same job and to attain
the promotions that will place them in leadership roles. Challenges specific to women
continue to be many.Some of which include
Wage gap-Data reveals that men and women with same work experience are
not paid equally. Gender pay gap is low at junior level and high at senior
levels. Women still earn only 54% of what men do for the same.
Discrimination remains present in the workplace; sexual harassment is
unfortunately not a thing of the past and the higher up you are promoted, the
fewer women there are. The bosses or employers at times demand sexual
favours from the women/men employees if they are to save their position and
their job. It also includes molestation, blackmailing them for the job .
Glass ceiling-bussiness women attempt to reach the top positions are
blocked by corporate tradition and practices.
Maternity is a major issue that affects employers, says experts.
While there is a proposal to compulsorily have woman on company boards,
HR officials believe this would only lead to further discrimination against
woman employees.
A human resource consultant said women would be discriminated against in
terms of projects and promotions if they joined a company based on a quota
and not on experience.
Pre-conceived notions about assigning women different posts is also a
constraint, say recruiters.

According to a study conducted by executive search firm EMA Partners, the famous
executive search firm, there are 11 out of 240 large companies in India has
appointed women CEO. In addition, none of the companies had a gender-balanced
board or management team. The figure clearly state that women are under-
represented on higher positions in the country.
Whether perceived or real, women leaders sometimes feel pressure to conform to
the male leadership model and if she bends to that pressure, she sacrifices one of
her own sources of strength and personal power. The first step toward overcoming
any challenge is awareness. Once aware, she can put some queues in place to
remind herself to rely on her emotional intelligence and the immediate situation
demands rather than conforming to some role model and associated actions she is
pre-conditioned to think is required.
Women can overcome this by staying true to and acting from their innate strengths in
their everyday approach to work and overcoming the inevitable obstacles. Women
tend to lead from a more interactive, cooperative style which often results in
strengthening the sense-of-team in employees.
More women should be taken in executive boards. Women bring a different
perspective based on a different set of life experiences. This perspective can
broaden and deepen the executive boards insight .
Organizations need to give thoughtful attention to creating a gender-neutral
environment. To do that, they must first truly understand what women in the
organization want and need from their employers .It may be the option of flexible
work arrangements or job-sharing.
In the best workplaces/companies, significant attention and resources are focused
on recruiting, retaining and developing women leaders. Its not only the right
thing to do, its smart business.There should be a grievance panel that looks into
the problems faced by the female employees and take immediate steps to redeem
them.
The employees should be properly informed regarding the maternity leave and
related issue.Paid maternity leaves should be provided.
Promotions should be on the basis of merit and performance output. A transparent
performance evaluation criteria must be adopted to ensure talent gets its fair
share.
Prevention of sexual harassment in the workplace constitutes an important.
Organisation should train the employees on zero-tolerance policy and provide the
employees with an anti-sexual harassment training session once every two years.
Organisation must investigate all complaints of sexual harassment and give
disciplinary punishment to harassers. Employees should be encouraged to speak
against any kind of sexual harassment. If they feel uncomfortable or violated, they
must address these concerns immediately not ignore it hoping that it will go away.

Significant emphasis is placed on the benefits that an organization can offer. Onsite
childcare, maternity benefits, womens networking groups, mentoring and
development are important to women. But, ultimately, an organization that genuinely
cares about their women employees will keep their women.IT has been found that
those companies that have active policies in place that ensure equal rights for
women and have taken active steps to redress that imbalance, are most successful.