WFH propelled women tech empowerment.

The analysis of the majority of women working in tech is around 30% — 35% in India when compared globally, it’s not a bad number especially and when compared to US and Europe, the percentage is still lower. It is sincerely felt that these numbers should be higher everywhere including India.

The problem lies in the higher positions in the corporate world as the number of women working at lower levels or as juniors is high but as we go higher we see a drastic fall in the women ratio and it’s majorly cause after marriage they have family commitments and have to look after their children and In-laws.

During the current Corona pandemic time the Work From Home can be seen as a boon in disguise to pull the number up as many companies are already seeing a major hike in applicants and also at more job offers for them.

The dynamic and emerging Global Leaders who saw a major shift in workforce and consider it as a boon shared their views with Times Of India in the Times Techies section .

1. Neha Bagaria Founder of Jobs For Her which is a portal for women to look for jobs and mentors a click away, stated that many women reallocate after getting married and may take a break in their career forward, while some may move to tier 2 or tier 3 cities and may not also have the right opportunities.
   She concluded that “Earlier, many companies didn’t see a compelling reason to try out flexible work arrangements which were important for women. Now when we are forced to quarantine ourselves and draw the entire workforce along with us remotely, the realisation has dawned on to them that this model is more efficient and productive.”
   Jobs For Her has seen a rise of 30% of the Jobs posted for WFH and 50% of rise in applicants applying for it, as compared to the previous year slot between 20 March to 20 April.
2. Dilyara Timerbulatova Product Manger at Power To Fly which is also a Global job portal for Women said that they have seen a major rise in the jobs being posed for remote and flexible roles earlier this year, as compared to the same in 2019.
3. Sunil C Head of Special staffing at Teams Lease Digital also expects a new confidence among the new recruits as he believes WFH is suppose to improve the participation of women by 3–5%.
4. Chaitanya Sreenivas HR at IBM India has experienced a lot of cases where women don’t move to bigger cities cause for work and also stated that with this WFH concept brought substantial shift in gender employment as a result a lot more women could be trained to work from the comfort of their home and join the workforce without having to migrate to different cities.
   He also expressed his view on how women could work on night shifts as well as they don’t have to look into the transportation and safety, they would be a few rooms/yards away from their workstation.
5. Sarika Naik Chairperson at Capgemini India is also expecting to see more women recruits having the relevant skill set from tier 2 & 3 cities.
6. Sangeetha Gupta Senior Vice President at IT industry body Nasscom shared her views on the major reason at women dropping off work after marriage in middle of their careers, reason being maternity leave which is a few months leave but is still a major setback to their careers as the industry is rapidly changing and ever evolving. The WFH concept acts as a boon here as it enables women to work form the comfort of their home and also avoid the leave or take a partial one which would as a whole make a huge difference for the women to rise in their careers.
7. Sameer Soman MD of Thought Woks India expressed his views on the work flexibility with the growing popularity and acceptability to short digital courses as they take a few weeks or months whereas the traditional degrees take up to 2–3 years, which will have a dramatic impact on the women recruitment and career progress. “These unbundled courses can be self-paced, done whenever you have time and you can also do multiple such course”. These are perfect as a women often encounters various constraints.

Major Tech companies have put in a lot of effort while addressing this issue as there weren’t sufficient Work From Home alternatives. Now during this pandemic we can see a major rise of confidence among the masses and suggests that there could be a threshold for the new women’s tech empowerment wave.

Reproduced from TOI

By- Akshita Sharma
LinkedIn: Akshita Sharma (https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshita-sharma-15a703111/)
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