Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Lessons in how women juggle career, family

CHENNAI: Renjini Mathew is not just a student of human resources management; she is also the only mother in her class of MBA students at the Great Lakes Institute of Management.

As she juggles her responsibilities, it helps to know that others have done it before – successfully.

At the institute’s event on Successful Women in Management on Tuesday, which she helped organise, Ms. Mathew found a number of role models, women who blazed the trail in India Inc during a much more hostile era. “When I started out, the question was “Can women work?” says Anu Aga, a pioneer in the field. Famed for her turnaround of Thermax after she took over the helm of the company after her husband’s death, Ms. Aga is one of India’s richest women, as well as a contented mother and grandmother.

She points out that today’s Indian woman can debate how to juggle various responsibilities and pursue her career dreams at different times of life, rather than fighting for the ability to have a professional life in the first place. “It’s all about the freedom of choice. Millions of poor, rural women in the country still don’t have that. But as educated women from relatively well-to-do backgrounds, we have so many choices – whether to have children or not, whether we want to work or not. What man gets those options,” she asked.

Mridula Ramesh, a director at Sundaram Textiles, pointed out many choices are still skewed against women. The glass ceiling is no myth, she says, but it may exist not just because of discrimination, but because of the compromises women are forced to make. In her own life, she has found that family support is crucial to success. She also treasures the example of trailblazers such as her great-aunt, who managed to set up Gandhigram and the National Social Service, despite being a young widow in the 1920s.

Landmark founder Hemu Ramaiah didn’t have the luxury of a family business. She blazed the entrepreneurial trail on her own while setting up India’s first large format bookstore. Having grown the business beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, she executed a smooth exit plan and has started on a brand new venture in her fifties. With a generation of Indian women having proved early success in the corporate field, they now face the question of how far they can go. Later in the afternoon, another band of women managers held a panel discussion on the topic: “Educated, Intelligent, Energetic and just in her 40s – Can she still pursue her career dream?” Ms. Mathew and her classmates were treated to practical tips on working as a newly-wed woman, returning to work after a break, and spending quality time with children in the midst of a hectic professional career. “It’s good to know that people can take up careers, nurture families and keep their values,” says Ms. Mathew.

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