International Sisters

We cannot afford another lost generation

Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash

When I started my fellowship for mid-life students at Stanford, I rather naively thought that I would have the monopoly on both patriarchy and poverty. I was the only woman in my cohort from South Asia, and in my mind, I was both poor and dominated. On the flight over, I even jotted down a few stories that I thought would have my classmates surprised and horrified. India seems to have it all: from the voluntary immolation of widows on their husband’s funeral pyre (a barbaric practice called Sati which was banned in 1829 but still appears from time to time), to bride burning for dowry (time to refill the coffers, let’s get a new wife for the son). It is one of those countries where doctors are not allowed to tell expectant parents whether their unborn baby is a boy or a girl because the fear is that a female foetus would be aborted. Poverty and culture makes parents discriminate in favour of boys at every stage: in education, in life-saving medicine, even in everyday meals! A boy is supposed to look after his parents so he is worth ‘ investing in.’ He is also the child who gives the ritual Hindu send off to a dead parent. Only a male child can ensure nirvana. A girl, on the other hand, is expensive to marry off (dowry) and goes away to her married home so not worth investing in. Rapes, sexual harassment, earning less for the same job… Indian women have seen it all.  Or so I thought.

I was right about India of course but I could not have been more wrong about my international sisters. I met and interacted with many American women during my fellowship year, both on campus and outside Stanford and their stories were not very different from mine. Yes there was no cruel one-time blow of female infanticide but they still had to deal with the daily violence of micro-aggressions once they were born into an unequal world. They were born in a country and time that was, if not hostile, at least not nurturing of their dreams and aspirations. They were not, as I had imagined, a bunch of highly educated career women who had shattered glass ceilings and leant into Lean In. Many of the married women in my class had given up work when they had children – the economics of childcare coupled with the husbands earning enough to keep the wife at home - contributed to this. I heard equally horrific stories about inequity in education; even in parental affection and love.

‘Why are you studying to be a lawyer?’

‘Nobody will marry you! ’

‘My brother was the favoured one, the three of us girls were not special in any way.’

 ‘The girl’s side still has to pay for the wedding… yes even now.’

‘ It is so hard to get back into the workforce after taking 20 years off. There are hardly any programs that update skills and rebuild confidence.’

‘ I wanted a proper paid job after so many years of volunteering and bringing up children, but nobody gave me a chance.’

‘ Yes, I worked and was successful but I always suffered from an imposter syndrome, like I did not deserve any of this.’

I want to scream! In the 21^st century? In the United States? These are women with degrees from Ivy League colleges, who have so much to give. As I got to know many of them, I grew to respect them as intelligent, well-read and insightful people. When we discussed the issue, I felt I could have been talking to friends of a similar age in India. In fact, I, and many of my women friends in India and Singapore had kept our jobs through the child rearing years. This was because household help and childcare was inexpensive relative to what we earned. This was not the case in developed Western countries, so women faced a difficult choice. Work and spend everything you earn on childcare or stay at home and be a full-time mother with little hope of getting back into the workforce.

Nobody deserves a stark choice like that. Especially when there are many easy fixes: more re-training programs, more part time work and less expensive child care. Many European countries have implemented this model and have succeeded in attracting women back into work after having children. However, this requires active government subsidies and intervention which may not go down so well in a market economy like the US.

My international sisters and I came up with some solutions for those wedded to the market economy. If you think the market pegs everything at its right value, here’s what we can do:

·      Start paying women for all the services they provide. The value of women’s unpaid care work in the US has been valued at $625 billion by the National Partnership of Women & Families

·      Improve maternity benefits and leave – the US still lags behind most other developed countries and India with a 3 month paid maternity leave. In most other countries it is 6 months paid leave

·      Make it compulsory for men to avail of paternity leave – not two weeks, the entire three months that the mother is on leave. That will level the playing ground. Men have children too and must be made to take time off. If they do not do it voluntarily they must be made to do so! Employers looking at men of childbearing age (and in the case of men it could stretch to 70 years old), must inwardly mark them down as a maternity leave risk. Unfair? Not at all. Women face this every time they apply for a job

Some of these solutions may seem radical but let not another International Women’s Day come and go with some meaningless photos on Whatsapp and some trite forwards on female strength. We cannot afford another lost generation. A young girl I know in Seattle was asked by her employer whether she means to come back to work after having a baby. It is a stark choice that still faces many women. In the US. In the 21^st century.

Apart from the personal tragedy of their careers, it makes me fear for India’s trajectory into the future. Also the trajectory of other developing countries in Asia and Africa. As wages rise, there will be less inexpensive childcare available. This might affect the few brave girls who are trying to manage a career and raising children. For India I do know the figure: women’s participation in the labour force is abysmally low at 37%. Will a developing economy bring less rather than more participation in the medium run, before highly skilled jobs start paying enough to pay expensive childcare?  Cultural factors such as patriarchy also make women who can ‘afford not to work’ stay at home.

We should not have had a ‘lost generation’ of women in my generation. We certainly cannot afford another one. So let’s get behind our beautiful and bright daughters: as mums, as dads, as policy makers, as employers. Actually I am pretty sure if more women in my generation had reached the C-suite, we would not be where we are now. Never again!