Disclosure: A modified version of this article published within the organization I work for.

NOTE: D & I: Diversity and Inclusion, WFH – Work from Home

It may be too early to say whether COVID-19 will be viewed as a significant event of 21^st century when our future generations look back, but I am sure COVID-19 will be a contender for that spot. It has been more than 6 months since India went in to lockdown in March. Now in August, we are not fully out of lockdown yet. From one day a week WFH pre-COVID, we moved to 100% WFH from second week of March. Shift happened in a binary transition, 0-100% over the weekend!!

We entered WFH with little clarity as to how long it is going to be. Initial few weeks it was mixed feelings, few positives and multiple apprehensions. On the apprehension front, will WFH be effective over long duration? Will we be able to make it work? Will the productivity be same like working from office? What will be the impact of not having face to face interaction with colleagues? Looking back, I am highly impressed by two things that stood out that enabled us to overcome our apprehensions and anxious feelings we had when we did the 100% shift – adaptability and technology. We, the sapiens, are highly adaptable animals and goes to show how we can overcome adverse environmental conditions if we cooperate and work together. Along with adaptability, technology played a huge role in not only making WFH effective and seamless but also connecting people, families, and friends. All of us are able to keep in touch with our friends and families with high quality video connections. Zoom, Google Meet have become household lingos. It is hard to comprehend how we could have sustained without the technology that has evolved over past 3 decades (from internet and WWW breakthrough). Beyond zoom meetings and message sharing, technology growth has enabled us to collect all kinds of data about COVID across the world, share and disseminate the same. From where we were in March to now, our collective learning about the virus has gone up. We still don’t have full understanding of the pandemic yet, but I am positive that we will get there soon.

It gives me a great feel and satisfaction that I had my contribution in small ways to the technology that is now connecting the world population. I started out my career with design of ISA, AT, and EISA SCSI controllers for PCs (if you know what these are, then you are 50+ years of age 😀). Wonderful journey it has been so far, controller design with 80186 to next generation architecture now. In between explored various architectures, CPU, and SOC designs. In 90s I had to try hard to explain my work to relatives – CPU, architecture, hardware etc. Semiconductor companies were not household names like soft drinks, TV, or car companies. All this changed with arrival of mobile in the last 15+ years. Now, Android Vs iOS duels happen on dinner table. I don’t need to explain about Intel, nVidia, ARM or Qualcomm to my relatives. Technology has reduced the cost of access to information and improved the ease of use.

My mom and my in-laws (in their late 70s), have their smartphones. They are big users of WhatsApp, video calls, mobile camera, and watch their favorite programs on streaming apps. In my conversations with them, one thing that stands out is they never imagined a future like this. Their previous generation maximum travelled to the nearest city or within the state. Both my mom and in-laws have travelled outside India multiple times, and can communicate and chat with their friends and family circles as and when they want at a minimal cost (for comparison, they never owned a landline till mid-90s). That got me thinking, how did this happen? How did my parents’ generation enable a bright future for their children? They gave high importance to education. Born pre-independence, coming out of colonial rule, and an uncertain future (including will India survive as a democracy), education was the key to success and pull yourself up multiple notches above poverty line. Looking back, one thing that strikes me is the push for education came more from mothers. Don’t mistake me, this is not to take away the due credit from the fathers. My mom, like many mothers of that generation, sat with us, made sure we studied and revised the material taught that day. She would make sure we explain the science concepts even though she wouldn’t’ fully understand it (never showed it though. She did only up to higher secondary school). She was very particular we all went to colleges and got our degrees. Only later we realized (came up in our conversations with her) she lived her dream through us. She spread her wings through her children. While me and my brother got our degrees and went to work, my sisters got their degrees, got married and took care of home.

As I neared my mid-20s and with travel (moved from a village in southern tip of India to Chennai to Delhi and then to Sunnyvale), it stuck me odd why my sisters didn’t opt for a job? What happened to girls who studied with me in schools and colleges? Except for those who did Engineering or Medical degrees, for others post their degrees next option was only marriage. As you understand more about patriarchal values, what strikes you is, it is equally practiced by both men and women in family and society. Need to acknowledge the fact as a society we have a come a long way. Till 40s and 50s, big % of the girls never sent to school. Only a few went to colleges. That has changed for better now. Now the goal post has shifted – parents do get their daughters educated with degrees but the decision to take up a job or not still relies mostly with parents or the husband¹.

Which brings me to the next reflection (remember I have more time at my disposal). Diversity and Inclusiveness is being recognized and credit to many companies (I hope it is not restricted to MNCs and IT companies) which are talking about it openly within the organization and laying measures to increase the diversity within the organization. Most of the companies I have worked with are looking at multiple ways to address the lack of diversity – hiring (red carpet programs), promotion (check % distribution across different groups – gender, race), grade level distribution (why the diversity % drops at higher grades), leave policies, flexible work hours to call out a few.

As I think further about the steps we take, realization dawns on me that we are up against the wall, the social structure wall. When it comes to India, enrollment is similar (not 50:50 yet but very close) between males and females at senior secondary and higher education levels in India. At higher education, % enrollment of females for Engineering & Technology courses is much lower than Arts, Sciences, and Medical (check level wise enrollment, Gender Parity Index (GPI), and Gross Enrollment Rate (GER) tables in MHRD document linked at the bottom^{2, 3}). While entry of females in to IITs is on the lower side, ~15%, ratio gets better in Tier 2 and Tier 3 colleges. While the number of women staying in education has gone up, when it comes to work force it goes down to 20% (% of total labor force, World Bank data, 2019). What could be the reason for less enrollment in engineering and women vanishing from work force even though equal number of them complete their higher education? Thinking loud, calling out few of my thoughts below with a word of caution: my observations and not necessarily backed up by data.

1. Entry barrier in to engineering colleges
   1. Cost⁴
   2. Relocation, need to stay in hostel – worries about safety, violence against women à swings the decision to local colleges even if they get admission to Tier-1 colleges
2. Education biases, perceptions, and preferences
   1. Engineering is for men, specifically when it comes to Mechanical, Civil, Electrical streams (This bias is slowly going away. More women are getting in to these branches – could be the nature of streams are becoming more computer integrated)
3. If you exclude jobs in MNCs and IT companies, other work places may not be women friendly – non-flexible work hours, leave policies
4. MNCs and IT companies are centered in handful of cities à drop out of work force due to reasons similar to 1(2)
5. Not enough jobs out there
6. Dropping out of work force after few years of work⁵
   1. Marriage: may need to leave job à Still a good % of families prefer educated but not working daughters-in-law (prevalent in middle and high-income groups)¹
   2. Child care, bringing up children, parental care à still relies mostly on women
   3. Husband gets transferred to a different location

Not all of the above hurdles can be addressed by corporates and that is not the right expectation. Good number of this require intervention from State and Society (topic for another article 😀). It is reasonable to expect the corporates to be role models and create role models by improving diversity in their work force though. Role models are required in society for next generation to look up to and aspire for. Even if the percentages of women in engineering courses is low, when it comes to absolute numbers, there is still a good number available for companies to hire from as fresh graduates. Add next tier of colleges in addition to Tier-1 colleges when it comes to fresh graduates hiring. I saw jump of ~10% points with this change in a year in an organization I worked for.

While expanding the graduate hiring to more colleges will address the intake, we still need to address (4) and (6). Retention challenge, % of women at higher grade levels go down mostly due to (6). I think WFH is a potential solution here. Pre-COVID, there was flexible hours, all the tools we use now to collaborate existed then too. We did collaborate with the same tools cross-site. Still, there was hesitation across the companies to allow 100% WFH – reasons could be multi-fold, some real, and most due to fear (loss of control?). COVID-19 changed all that. In the last 6 months we have overcome all those fears and apprehensions, shown that even with everyone working from where they are teams can still deliver on milestones without missing a beat. Companies onboard new hires virtually now – pre-COVID that thought would have never occurred. May be when we come out of COVID post vaccine, work location may become a non-issue. WFH flexibility provides a tool in the hands of women to make an argument to continue with their jobs when it comes to (4) & (6) above⁶ (It goes without saying we need more than WFH that allows inclusion for increasing diversity. Focus of the essay is to show WFH is a valuable tool in scheme of things).

When it comes to us, the employees, what we can do is to discuss D & I topics openly at home over dinner table. So many opportunities exist for us to bring up the topic and have a healthy conversation at home with our children and other family members about perceptions and biases. Not an easy thing to do since our children will put us on a spot with their questions. If we can’t face those challenging questions at home, how are we going to handle the same at work, which will be much more challenging?

Let me end my meandering thoughts on a lighter note with a quote from a Tamil movie Kabali: Birds character is to fly. Do not cage them. Set them free. Let them decide whether to live or die. Your misplaced mercy is crueler than death.

NOTES:

1. I am fully mindful of the fact that there are parents who want their daughters to excel in career or leave the choice to their daughters and there are good % of girls who decide on their own what to do with their life. They are ahead of the curve. Progress is happening may be at a slower rate than what we like it to be
2. MHRD: https://www.mhrd.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/statistics-new/ESAG-2018.pdf
3. When it comes to India, may be similar in other countries too, national level indicators don’t give the full picture since the variation between the states are high. There are few states which pull it down while few other states pull it up. To get a better understanding and nuance one need to look in to state level distribution. For example, IMR varies from 10 to 46 across states while the national average is 34. TFR varies from 1.6 (below replacement rate of 2.1) to 3.2 with national TFR at 2.2. When the data says women in work force is 20%, the number varies based on income levels. At low income group participation is high. As the income level goes up, participation comes down.
4. To get in to engineering institutes one need to take multiple entrance tests, like JEE-Mains, JEE-Advanced, BITSAT, CET, etc. JEE-Advanced being one of toughest test in the world. Not possible to clear by just studying for the board. Require special coaching classes that will easily dent your account balance by 250K to 400K INR. Cost, after hours coaching classes, possible relocation to a different city / state for coaching
5. There are going to be women who prefer not to work by choice. Not considering those. Not in scope of this essay
6. This is not to say 100% WFH is the way to go eventually for companies. We will miss out on culture and value propagation in a purely virtual world. More so for new employees. There is value in having the structure of a workday at least some of the time for most of the people that is naturally created by an in-person presence that WFH does not achieve. We need to strike a balance between WFH and on-site face-to-face interactions

References:

• BITSAT: Birla Institute of Technology and Science Admission Test
• CET: Common Entrance Test
• GER: Gross Enrollment Rate
• GPI: Gender Parity Index
• IIT: Indian Institute of Technology
• INR: Indian Rupees
• JEE: Joint Entrance Exam
• MHRD: Ministry of Human Resource Development
• MNC: Multi-National Corporation
• NIT: National Institute of Technology
• WFH: Work from Home