Greta Gerwig, Ma Laxmi, and Managing Female Employees
I was recently reading a blurb from the book Eve — How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution. The author discusses how the female body differs from the male body. Yet, drugs such as painkillers are primarily tested on male recipients.
It reminded me of the time when I was newly appointed as a manager and was actively thinking of how to empower women in my team. The conventional wisdom was to be gender-neutral when making all decisions, but it seemed impractical. Finally, two incidents shaped my management philosophy. First, I read an article about how a large technology company attracted mothers who had taken extended maternity leave back to the office. They observed a 40% increase in efficiency because they wanted to avoid hanging around in the office for a long time. They would find the shortest routes to complete projects and cut through processes unnecessarily that added weeks to a project. The organization provided them with flexible timings, opened a daycare at the office, and provided other incentives to ensure women who had taken maternity leave felt comfortable returning to work. This article helped me understand that we cannot ignore gender at work.
The second incident I learned from was when we underwent business simulation training. We had to run a fictitious company and completely failed on the first day. It was a humiliating exercise, and we spent a long night understanding the game’s mechanics to ensure we recovered on the second day. Somehow, post-dinner, the women in our team did not join us back in the room, and we did not invite them because we did not want to disturb them at night. It was an unspoken understanding that demonstrates an unconscious bias we have in the workplace. We make accommodations for women without even asking them if they are comfortable. The training team asked us how we performed so much better the next day, and we proudly talked about how we worked late into the night. They looked the women in the eye and asked them about their contribution, and they sheepishly replied that they did not stay up that late. They asked all the men how we could make critical decisions without having key stakeholders around and how this reflects the bias we see in the world every day. They explained how women must do their bit to ensure they are present during such times. Men need to ensure they are considerate and plan things better to accommodate them.
These two incidents shaped my philosophy. We created long-term plans so everyone has visibility for future projects. We plan meeting timings to ensure they work for everyone. Most importantly, all project allocation decisions and expectations are gender-neutral to ensure we did not demonstrate bias while allocating projects that demanded travel or collaboration across time zones. While the system was not perfect, it worked well. It helped everyone trust each other and celebrate our similarities and differences.
Let me describe an incident shared by Billy Oppenheimer about Greta Gerwig, my favorite director. When she directed a play in Grade Seven, her friends called her bossy and annoying. This experience impacted her so much that she gave up on direction and decided on a career in writing. Seventeen years later, she met the director Sally Potter and asked her questions about writing. After patiently answering them, Sally grabbed Greta’s arm and said, “Why don’t you ask me what you really want to ask me?”
Greta was confused, “What do I really want to ask you?”
“You really want to ask me about directing,” Potter said.
“How do you know that?” Greta asked.
“It’s written all over you,” Potter replied. “The word is ‘dor,’ which means, ‘a yearning that’s bigger than your body.’ You have that, and you need to do it. You need to be a director.”
Four years later, they met when Greta won an award for her debut movie, Ladybird. It’s a phenomenal film, and she went on to make Little Women and Barbie. It took one small intervention by another director to get Greta started. I wonder how many Gretas are still out there, waiting for someone to nudge them to pursue their dreams.
The Beautiful Place for Worshiping Feminine Energy in Sanatana Dharma
I am in the middle of doing the beautiful and powerful Sri Sukhtam Sadhana. In this spiritual practice, we worship Ma Laxmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity, for sixteen days. Every day, my guru Om Swami takes up a small portion of the rituals and explains the esoteric meaning as we perform them.
Recently, he explained the meaning of one of her names — Govindgrehmedhini. She is the one who runs the household of Lord Vishnu or Govinda. Lord Vishnu is called the preserver of the entire universe, and he has taken human form in avatars such as Rama and Krishna while the Devi accompanied him in the form of Ma Sita and Ma Rukmini. The name holds two critical points of significance. First, it describes Ma Laxmi as the energy that manages the affairs of the lord, who manages the whole universe. More importantly, the word Medha means wisdom. She is also called the wisdom of Lord Vishnu himself. She is the one you must pray to get access to Lord Vishnu. It was so beautiful to hear this because, in most cultures, women have a minimal role in the spiritual process. The feminine energy is either ignored or marginalized. Sanatana Dharma boasts of having an entire Shakta tradition and practices, such as Sri Vidya, exclusively dedicated to realizing the divine in the form of feminine energy.
While this practice is not common in many parts of India, our scriptures provide the foundational knowledge to help people understand that the Devi they worship also live in their daughters and wives. The scriptures also provide fantastic knowledge to help people understand how to worship the feminine both at the altar and in their homes. You can do this fantastic Devi Bhagwatam course to learn more about worshipping feminine energy.
