Male champions of change important to fix issues of gender at workplace: Zia Mody

Recognition for women’s talent has grown a lot over the past 10 to 15 years. The reason is obvious—there is a war for talent and women constitute a large part of that talent pool.

But issues still remain on parity of pay, unconscious biases in hiring, and how to retain good women talent who need flexibility at certain stages of their lives—especially after marriage and during early motherhood. Even here, organisations have realised that they need to be flexible in their approach if they want to retain valuable talent.

Whilst women leaders get this proposition far more quickly, there is a need for male champions of change to emerge in greater numbers. Diffidence in talking through these issues between the people in charge and the women who require this flexibility is real. Hence, HR personnel have to play an intermediary’s role and become an effective bridge between the concerns of the organisation and the requirements of women employees, and communicate these priorities effectively.

Personally, I have not found it very difficult to understand the flexibility required by women employees and to facilitate these requirements in most cases. The women who have come back, have come back as far more appreciative lawyers and employees who stick with the organisation.

But in the years to come, people have to be more conscious about this aspect. If women constitute a large part of the workforce, we cannot have a leaky pipeline where, I believe, 46 per cent of them drop out of the workforce at any given time. Practical ways to make the environment surrounding women employees supportive, to help them get to work and be happy, have to be thought through in a bespoke way. One policy often does not fit all and each one has a personal issue that has to be talked through and dealt with on an individual level.

Overall, however, a woman has much more to smile about than before. Her talent is appreciated and all managers—men and women alike—are looking to recognise this talent. I think in the next 10-15 years, a lot of the glass ceilings will be broken and life will change for women workers, especially in urban areas. In rural areas, the change will happen when women can put money on the table and have a say in things. This will happen with girl children being educated in larger numbers and the family recognising that the girl child is as valuable as the boy child. Marriages at a young age need to come down and a woman’s ability to have aspirations and ambitions should be fostered, especially by the mother, who probably did not have the same opportunities. There are many NGOs working on these aspects and the scale of this keeps increasing every year.

Therefore, women’s empowerment is bound to happen. As a Baha’i by faith, we have a religious edict of men and women being equal and that mankind is like a dove that has two wings, one being the man and the other the woman. And without both being equal, the bird simply cannot fly.

I hope more of us will be convinced of this reality and give more thought and leadership opportunities to women’s empowerment going forward.

The author is Co-founder & Managing Partner of AZB & Partners. Views are personal