Tamil Nadu   

Working women and work-life conundrum

M. Dinesh Varma

CHENNAI: Many modern-day woman professionals experience a sense of guilt at leaving their child to pursue a career, and this is the strongest negative motivator for quitting full-time jobs, according to a multi-city survey among working women.

According to the findings of the study by AVTAR Career Creators’ Flexi-Careers Viewport – 2007, most working women still abide by an unwritten rule that requires planning careers around the needs of the household.

The four-month-long research project, conducted in nine Indian cities, including Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and Pune, covered 1,145 women professionals across multiple functional areas. The respondents had registered their profiles with the website, www.avtariwin.com, a service that identifies part-time, flexi-time and project-based career opportunities for women professionals.

Significantly, for an increasing number of women professionals, flexi careers (flexible work timings) offer the perfect via media to achieve better work-life balance. A whopping 83 per cent of women professionals felt that working for only a few hours a day was the only option that provided the best of both worlds.

‘The study has made us sit up and think of flexi careers as a viable and, perhaps, the onlysolution to the stress and mental health problems faced by women professionals,’ says Saundarya Rajesh, Chief Executive, AVTAR Career Creators.

Only in roughly 40 per cent of the cases is a flexi career seen as a stop-gap arrangement.

For the remaining , it was a conclusive choice, a pointer, perhaps, to the importance that the current generation of mothers (with children less than 5 years old) attach to work-life balance.

The study found active remnants of the legacy of gender stereotype associating the male with the role of primary provider while spouses take complete charge of the home and child rearing; even if it meant laying full-time careers on the block.

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