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In the 21st century, it is a commonly accepted fact that diversity is necessary in the workplace, society and the world…especially when it comes to the ever-transient world of technology. However, when people look hard, they will still find gender discrepancies in job roles that require its candidates to have a proficient level of understanding of technology. In such situations, men are given more preference than women. Society unfortunately has very preconceived notions about the types of careers women can excel in. This includes careers such as tailoring/fashion design/human resources. It’s time to change that because as things presently stand, in India, there is in fact just 1 female engineer for every 3 male engineers in Indian tech companies.
As the discrepancy between men and women in technology is so high, it’s aworth noting the accomplishments of the women who did manage to achieve great heights in this field. Debjani Ghosh is one of them. She is the first woman President of NASSCOM in more than 30 years! Before joining NASSCOM, she was heading sales and marketing at Intel in South Asia for more than two decades. According to her, “We have to work towards accomplishing our dreams if we really believe in them. This will always involve taking risks and stepping out of our comfort zones. The worst that can happen is failure, and with every failure comes rich learning that can open up new ideas and opportunities”.
Another such woman is Vanitha Narayan, who is currently the Managing Director of IBM. She was named one of the ‘Most Powerful Women’ in Business in India by Fortune India in 2017 and one of the 12 Global Indian Super Women of 2016 by CXOToday.
While these accomplishments are meant to be celebrated, has anyone noticed a certain trend among the above two women? These women come from very well educated and privileged backgrounds. They have access to opportunities that most women in India are not fortunate enough to receive. Let us shift our focus to those women who weren’t as lucky to have such brilliant opportunities and still managed to break the glass ceiling in the technology sector through sheer will power and hard work.
One such success story is that of a young girl named Simi Khan. She came from Metiabruz- a settlement on the outskirts of Kolkata. It was initially known as ‘Old Lucknow’ and consists of old colonial buildings that are a stark contrast to modern Kolkata’s cosmopolitan way of life. The same could be said of its residents…especially its women. The people who live there have typical preconceived about gender norms, believing that men should be the sole bread-winners of the household, while the women should stay relegated to the kitchen and other homely duties. This is where Simi comes to the forefront. She was one of her society’s first women to breakaway from its established gender norms and enrol in Anudip’s digital skilling program to become financially independent. Anudip is an organisation that is dedicated toward improving and empowering the lives of underprivileged youth all over India by teaching them skills which would enable them to acquire fruitful careers and lead holistic lives. Today she is an employee of a leading digital data service and works on advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. Her case also encouraged more than 8000 girls from her community to join the same programme. Moreover, Simiwas also able to influence her mother to join the same course and work with the same level of cutting-edge technology.
Another story that is similar in certain ways, yet wildly different from the above explores the case of Parizad Rahman, a young girl in the Murshidabad district of West Bengal. Her father and brother worked as daily wage labourers. She had just given her 10th boards and was ready to pursue further studies when she met her neighbours; a man named Azhar Ali and his elderly maternal figure—Azira Bibi. The two soon fell in love and planned to elope. When the girl went missing, her parents lodged a complaint at their local police station. All signs pointed towards the neighbours who had also vanished at the same time. A local NGO found out that Azhar&Azira were sex traffickers from Ghaziabad. While Delhi police promptly took action, it was too late. Parizad was already a victim of sex trafficking. While she was returned to her parents, societal stigma grew against her in her village. In 2018, her luck changed when Anudip launched its BEST (Building Entrepreneurship to Stop Trafficking) initiative at Domkal in Murshidabad offering livelihood opportunities to victims of human trafficking by teaching them entrepreneurship and digital skills. Parizad enrolled at her village’s Anudip BEST centre and is currently attending classes where she is trained on crowd-sourced assignments on transforming unstructured texts, image and video data into customized and trained data. In this way, Parizad became a determining force behind her own future and reduced the stigma surrounding her situation
Breaking the glass ceiling is no easy feat…especially when someone comes from an underprivileged background and doesn’t have the resources to do so. In a country where women are already more suppressed than their male counterparts, and their fates are decided upon their birth, the harsh truth remains that the lower your socio-economic background, the higher the glass ceiling…especially in a male dominated field such as technology. Therefore, it become even harder for such women to break through such barriers. This is when women need to come together and lift each other up. Women who have come from privileged backgrounds and have made it big in technology-related fields need to act as inspirations to those who have dropped out or been unable to pursue careers in the same. This can also ensure that more women get to helm big technology companies in India. It’s time for women to show the world what they’re capable of by letting their self-worth and confidence shine through even when the odds seem too great. All women are capable of breaking barriers regardless of where they come from. It’s time for them to change it with their confidence, love and minds.
Blogger: Pritha Banerjee
To read her blogs, visit (https://mindmusingsdotblog.wordpress.com)
