Remote working might not really be a boon for women techies. A study by IT firm Hexaware Technologies suggests that it has had a negative impact on the women workforce, who are more stressed due to pressure from both work and home fronts.
The research was done to understand the impact of work from home (WFH) on women, said Hexaware CEO R Srikrishna. According to the report, there is a twofold to threefold increase in the workload of women employees.
This should not come as a surprise given that as primary caregivers, the entire burden of taking care of children, elderly and managing household duties fall on women. Also, Srikrishna pointed out that there is a huge difference in the way society views men and women working from home.
Saundarya Rajesh, Founder – President, Avtar Group, a diversity and inclusion solutions firm, agreed that blurring boundaries between work and home are a major challenge. “With women (especially in India) continuing to be responsible for the majority of the household responsibilities as also that of care-giving, treading the fine line of well-integrated work and life becomes a day-to-day challenge,” she said.
Women in tech
According to women techies Moneycontrol spoke to, this could very well be the breaking point, and WFH instead of increasing women's participation might do the opposite.
This should be important as IT firms are one of the largest employers of women. The majority of the firms have an average of 35 percent women employees. The sector employs about 50 lakh people.
Take for instance Ramya, a Chennai-based techie who works for a top IT firm. She joined work in May after her maternity leave. Her son is now 10 months old. Three months of WFH has not been kind to her, contrary to what she initially thought.
Ramya is neither able to participate in daily calls for the whole duration nor is she able to complete her work. “Between taking care of my son and housework, it has been a challenge,” she admits. Ramya’s husband does not help her and her mother, who is a state government employee, helps her out only in the evenings.
“Even then, taking calls after 10 pm is frowned upon,” says Ramya. If it were pre-COVID times, she would have been able to hire a maid and have her mother take care of her son in the evenings until she is able to return home.
Ramya is also facing backlash from her team members for not pulling enough weight. She is worried about taking time off on the back of layoffs in IT firms.
If new mothers without a support system are facing the challenge, those who are leading the team are a whole different story.
Dhanya, who works for an IT firm in Chennai, leads a six-member team. She is working for a banking client and hence WFH was never an option for her before COVID-19. So she was excited at the possibility of WFH for the first time.
That lasted only for a week. For, she realised she was working for longer hours, on calls multiple times a day and eating at irregular hours.
“In office, I used to finish my work in 5 hours and the rest was for review and team management. Now I take 8 hours to finish my work and spend the rest of the day on phone, talking to my colleagues and fixing their issues for them,” Dhanya explained.
Taking a coffee or lunch break has been impossible as her team and manager want one issue or the other to be sorted out. “'The comment I often hear is 'you can always take a break after this' when I say I am on break and will call back in 10-15 minutes,” points out Dhanya.
Talking to the business head to tweak work allocation based on the need did not help. Her stress levels spiked and she broke down a few times before she decided to move to her hometown in the southern part of Tamil Nadu with her parents.
“At least here I get three meals a day and don’t have to worry about chores. Back in Chennai, it was impossible to do both,” Dhanya admitted.
Both Ramya and Dhanya can’t wait to get back to work. For them, workplace gave a sense of balance. “Unless the company brings in policy changes that make WFH more balanced, it is impossible to continue this way,” they add.
What are companies doing?
Hexaware is sensitising managers about the challenges women colleagues face. An executive of a mid-tier IT firm pointed out that the entire idea of remote working is new and the firm getting feedback to understand what is working and what is not.
Manoj Bhat, CFO, Tech Mahindra, pointed out that employees can now work at flexible work hours as long as they can complete work within the stipulated time.
So instead of 10 am to 7 pm, they can choose to work from 6 am to 10 am and resume from 5 pm to 10 pm.
Some IT firms, Rajesh pointed out, have introduced training interventions for not just their women professionals but also for their spouses to increase awareness and help them narrow the gender chore gap at home. Other initiatives include gender-sensitisation programmes like the one Hexaware is conducting.
But is that enough?
Probably not. Though companies have tailor-made policies for women, a policy in isolation will not work, said Rajesh. They also need to be aligned with the company’s diversity and inclusion strategy and should be coupled with management accountability.
For, if done right, WFH has a huge potential to increase women's participation in the country's workforce.
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