Internships for Women: 18 month project, 5 fold growth, and more learning
If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman. — Margaret Thatcher
I once came across an article on BBC; the article talked about how gender disparity at workplace in India is a massive problem. According the article, 67% of women who take a career break (because of marriage, maternity, or any other reason) fail to return to work.
I think this was the motivation which led us to come up with our special Mother’s Day campaign, Internships for Supermoms. We launched this campaign (in association with FedEx, Godrej, etc) to help women who had taken a career break because of maternity & couldn’t go back to work.
The objective of the campaign was so noble & wonderful that we didn’t have any struggle getting partners for it; most of the companies we spoke to readily agreed to associate for the campaign. Media also loved the concept & there were articles about it in newspaper.
Back in 2016, we didn’t have much of a women audience on Internshala. We promoted campaign on Social Media, we partnered with relevant start-ups to help us reach more women, and we did referral campaign with students & employers on the platform asking them to share about the campaign with the relevant women in their network. We were able to receive some good applications & we’re able to close some of the positions, helping a few women find a meaningful internship to re-start their career.
After this campaign, there was a long pause.We didn’t do anything in segment for about a year & half.
There are a lot of data about women participation to work in India. The gender ratio is worst among the BRICS countries; it’s lower than the world’s average; as the BBC, 69% of the women who take a career break fail to return to work, and so on.
In Aug 2017, we decided to build Internships for Women segment (below is the page design). We created a dedicated page, made product changes, laid down marketing plans, finalised branding ideas, and everything that was required build up this segment.
We kickstarted the work in Aug 2017. We created enough internship opportunities & stared reaching out to women to tell about these opportunities. We saw figures rolling up.
In parallel, we’re also reaching out to women to talk to them & find out their stories. And did find some really great stories.
Ahuti, a housewife, started her career in her 40s. Until now, her only responsibly was to take care of her family, but now she is a freelance writer. Not only getting to tell wonderful stories, but also is financially independent.
Vidya, a software engineer, re-started her career in her 50s, after a decade long break. She is helping her husband automate his business with the help of technology.
Even one of Sarvesh’s (Internshala’s founder & CEO) sisters had found an internship through this campaign.
And there were many other wonderful stories; almost all of them very inspiring & heart touching! We enough support from media — more than 20 news outlets (and majority of them national level outlets)talked about this initiative. What more, every time we did something new (internship fair, contests, ambassador program, etc) in this segment, media would pick up. There have been more than 50 press coverage (54 to be precise) for Internships for Women!
And then we decided to put this segment on an autopilot* in Dec’18.
Well, here is another side of story. After April, the numbers became stagnant; no matter what we did, it didn’t move. We tried community engagement, career fairs, contests, paid campaigns, and so on and so forth. But the numbers didn’t buzz, indicating us that it has hit the upper ceiling for now.
We realised it’s not the lack of a platform (there are many — Sheroes, Jobsforher, herseccondinning, etc) or opportunities (on Internshala we brought more than 8000 internships for which women could apply) that is keeping women out of workplace.
It’s the problem of social structure & mindset, which is deeply engrained in our society. It’s the problem of women-are-supposed-to-manage-household.
While many business & social initiatives would keep playing their roles, I believe it’s a problem where government intervention would play a bigger role; the way government fought with polio or came up with a national level ‘education-for-all’ campaign, government needs to come with a national level campaign (like Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao) to encourage women employment also.
As per IMF, “Raising women participation for labour to the same level as men can boost India’s GDP by 27%”. And that’s a good reason for government to intervene, sooner than later 😊
*For now, internships for Women page is live (and would be live — here). Interested women can still apply for internships & reach out to us for any queries.
