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Recently, TCS witnessed a mass exodus of women after it decided to go back to work-from-office. Do policies at workplaces handicap employed women’s mobility?

Mandatory work-from-office rules are pushing more women to quit their jobs

Recently, Tata Consultancy Services in India witnessed a mass exodus of women after the company decided to go back to work-from-office mode. Do policies at workplaces continue to handicap employed women’s mobility?

“Balancing professional and family demands has always been a challenge for me. I often end up with stress, anxiety and disharmony at home,” says 39-year-old Syed Faza. Hailing from Kashmir, Faza works as an assistant manager in a private sector bank in Bathinda, Punjab, where, she says, “not a single day has passed when I have not worked beyond my regular office hours.” And Faza is not alone in being unable to secure the ever-elusive work-life balance that often forces India’s already low female workforce off full-time jobs. 

To put things into context, in June this year, Tata Consultancy Services, an Indian multinational information technology services and consulting company—the largest employer of women in India in the private sector (as of December 2022)—ended its three-year-long work-from-home policy and expected its employees to return to office. Except, a considerable chunk of its female staff didn’t. They, in fact, resigned en masse. The reason behind this, as per TCS’ HR Head Milind Lakkad was, at best, speculative: “I would think working from home during the pandemic reset the domestic arrangements for some women, keeping them from returning to office even after everything normalised," he said in an interview published in the company's 2022 annual report. 

A skewed reality

Nearly half of India’s population is female, but their employment rate remains abysmally low. According to the World Bank, in 2021, fewer than one in five Indian women work formally. The female participation rate in India's labour force was at its peak in 2000 at 31 per cent. Since then, it has consistently fallen, hitting a low of 24 per cent  in 2022. One of the major reasons behind this is India’s patriarchal family structure which continues to place women as the primary caregiver where hours of their domestic work goes unpaid. 

While many lauded the pandemic-induced work-from-home modules as a boon, working women had to keep several balls in the air. Shweta Papriwal, vice president of marketing, content and communications at blinkX, a fintech company, shares, "For the trading sector, markets were at an all-time high, and I was working 14 to 18 hours a day in my previous organisation because there was no bifurcation of work timings. Since we were working from home, our organisation thought we were always available. Remote work blurred the lines between our workstations and the kitchen platform. It was like multitasking to the highest of levels. This is especially pronounced in a society where the weight of domestic duties traditionally falls on the woman's shoulders. This imbalance also contributes to the low representation of women in the workforce.”

Papriwal stresses on the importance of having the support of family members, especially for a married woman or a mother to be able to work. “If I did not have any family member to take care of my son when he was a child or if he was in daycare and I'd get late to pick him up, I would have given up and sat at home. As women, many of us tend to give importance to our children and our families,” she says. 

While many lauded the pandemic-induced work-from-home modules as a boon, working women had to keep several balls in the air. Image: Pexels

While many lauded the pandemic-induced work-from-home modules as a boon, working women had to keep several balls in the air. Image: Pexels

Tata Consultancy Services, an Indian multinational information technology services and consulting company—the largest employer of women in India in the private sector (as of December 2022)—ended its three-year-long work-from-home policy and expected its employees to return to office. Image: Pexels

Tata Consultancy Services, an Indian multinational information technology services and consulting company—the largest employer of women in India in the private sector (as of December 2022)—ended its three-year-long work-from-home policy and expected its employees to return to office. Image: Pexels

“Every sector and every organisation battled with the return of women to work post-pandemic,” observes Megha Dhamija, Mumbai-based HR professional and principal partner at Talent Coach People Consulting. “Women were the ones dropping out. Why? Because with household chores, they were not able to juggle the work-from-home situation. The family expects the woman of the house to be doing everything. Moreover, most of the decisions about possible movement or where you are working from were driven by the men in the family; working women were making decisions largely based on where the husband's workplace is. A lot of such deep-rooted cultural stereotypes reemerged and that's when this attrition rate started.” 

The expectation to adjust

However, a 25-year-old Kolkata-based TCS employee, who requested to stay anonymous, said that she was grateful that the company allowed her to work from the office 10 days of the month and work from home for the rest even after the pandemic abated. “I have a lot of responsibilities at home because my parents are ageing, so working from home allowed me to be there for them. But I was mentally prepared to be called back to the office eventually. And when they did, all I could do was negotiate the number of days [to be at the workplace]."                                                                 

She further expresses that when it comes to one’s professional life, women often have to make several adjustments. “From Monday to Friday, I have to adjust and manage my time and mold myself into my work routine,” she says. Aindrila, 27, who works as an assistant editor with a Delhi-based publishing house, agrees, adding that she often has to attend long meetings after her working hours. According to her, women, in general, “tend to set the bar very low. We are thankful enough to our families for letting us work or not forcing us to marry. Now we can't expect our workplace to be so accommodating, too. I think this comes from years of conditioning and being taught to expect the bare minimum from workplaces in general.”

Every woman the author interviewed for this story believes that companies across the country are failing to take into consideration the cultural intricacies and gender roles when hiring women. Image: Pexels

Every woman the author interviewed for this story believes that companies across the country are failing to take into consideration the cultural intricacies and gender roles when hiring women. Image: Pexels

A lack of role models

Agnetta Rebello, 31, a Pune-based senior engineer in a multinational automotive R&D company, thinks that in order to encourage more women to join the workforce, companies ought to have reserved vacancies for women. “There’s a lot of pushback on diversity hires. But when you do have diversity hires, you not only make the office a lot safer for women already working there, but also give opportunities to deserving women who might not have gotten the job otherwise.” However, in a country where multiple potential factors are at play to hinder a woman’s professional growth, just that is not enough, she says. “In my company—as I assume is the case in many other companies—we don’t have women heading any departments. When you don’t have someone to look up to and see that you, too, can get to that position, you tend to get discouraged and drop off work altogether, no matter how capable you are. Many of us might look at the responsibilities that will fall on us if we get that promotion as a burden because that might mean deprioritising responsibilities at home, which would eventually label us a ‘bad mother,’ ‘bad wife’ or ‘bad daughter-in-law’.” 

Every woman the author interviewed for this story believes that companies across the country are failing to take into consideration the cultural intricacies and gender roles when hiring women. Faza even shares that in her experience, “male bosses get disappointed by women being hired at their workplace because they are always of the opinion that women struggle with the trouble of balancing their work and family.” Dhamija also noted that post-pandemic, companies lacked the readiness to welcome women back to office with a “family-friendly policy” which allows them to juggle work and the household without having to take “extreme measures like quitting their jobs.” 

When it comes to one’s professional life, women are often expected to make more adjustments than their male counterparts. Image: Unsplash

When it comes to one’s professional life, women are often expected to make more adjustments than their male counterparts. Image: Unsplash

Nearly half of India’s population is female, but their employment rate remains abysmally low. Image: Unsplash

Nearly half of India’s population is female, but their employment rate remains abysmally low. Image: Unsplash

A need for flexibility

Ashish Chopra, 29, talent sourcer at a multinational technology company, thinks that given every woman’s household responsibilities look different, companies ought to offer more flexibility in their working modules. “There are so many roles where the employee does not have to come to the office, so perhaps don’t make it mandatory for them to do so. I also know a lot of my female colleagues who fetch their children from school in the middle of a working day. So, just allowing them that flexibility, that, ‘hey, if your child’s school ends at 3 pm, you can leave, pick up your child and go home. If there is more work, log in from home and finish it.’ Don't mandate that you have to sit in the office from 9 am to 5 pm—it’s just not going to work, especially as  people have gotten comfortable working from home since the pandemic.”

Dhamija adds that besides conducting regular mental and physical health check-ins, companies can also have female support groups and sponsors, especially in an office where the percentage of women employees is already low. “As an organisation, if you care about your female employees’ holistic development and make them ready to deal with the kind of biases they face, I think it goes a long way in retaining them and preventing them from taking extreme steps like quitting their jobs altogether.”

Disha Makharia, a Mumbai-based principal consultant at Ushtate Consultancy says that communication is key in order to understand a female employee’s specific concerns. “Companies should be willing to hear their concerns, and you can then try and reach a middle ground. The employees will feel that the management at least hears them out. Several companies are very rigid—you either accept the rules or you don’t. But decisions have to be taken on a case-to-case basis.”

Also Read: How weight bias disproportionately affects women at work

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