A young girl who was applying for jobs during campus placement was categorically told by her parents “You can leave home to go to any city except Delhi!” A friend agonised deeply before accepting a transfer to Delhi, despite it being a better role, just because he has a young daughter. Another friend worries when he sends his daughter to play in the building compound in Delhi, whereas in Mumbai it used to be par for the course.
And who can blame them? With the reputation it has unfortunately built for itself, no one feels safe in Delhi any more. That is the tragedy of a city which has so much to recommend for itself. Wide leafy roads, a working infrastructure, beautiful heritage monuments which are a history lesson in themselves, parks in every locality and a literary and cultural environment which would be the envy of every enlightened connoisseur; all nullified because of a failure to make its streets safe for women!
With the persistent media coverage of the various sexual harassment cases perpetuated by judges, CEOs and editors recently, one big concern I have is that will certain industries or even the entire corporate world get tarred with a Delhi–like reputation? Will parents forbid their daughters from joining a specific industry or even worse, from working at all?
If so, that will be the saddest tragedy that will befall women. Precisely because they are so few in number, they are seen as a minority whose voice often gets lost in the larger noise. More the women who enter the workforce and hang on through the mid layer, more is the likelihood that there will be women in senior leadership roles. While that in itself (as we saw in the latest sexual harassment episode) may not do anything to prevent such cases from occurring or even getting due justice, I do believe it creates in an organisation a more empathetic, equitable and thereby safer environment. Sexual harassment is not about sex, it is about power and the current inequity in the power equation between men and women at senior roles. This needs to be corrected to prevent these incidents from happening.
I also want to tell young girls (and their parents) that for every story they read about sexual harassment episodes occurring with such alarming regularity, there are thousands of cases of women who have been working and continue working without having faced any kind of harassment whatsoever in their careers. For every one nasty lecherous excuse for a man, there are thousands of good and decent males who are working in professional harmony with women as bosses, colleagues and subordinates in every sphere and corner of the country today.
Let not one bad egg define your world view of males and corporate India in general. The vast majority of men working with us have no designs on our virtue. Like most of us they are here to earn an honest day’s living, go back home and sit in front of their TV’s and frankly not really care about the pretty colleague who sits at the desk next door!
It will be a pity if we let some rotten folk define what we want to do (or not do) with our careers and our potential instead of seeing life as it mostly is – Sunny Side Up!
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