Sangeetha Chengappa, Bengaluru
The Asian Age
The onset of globalisation has resulted in multinational IT corporations embracing a culture of ‘inclusion’ where diversity is clearly valued. A workplace where employees understand and accept multiple cultures and perspectives.
While all this sounds good on paper, most corporations have made a beginning with ‘gender inclusion’. They are inducting more women into a male dominated workplace. Diversity is a much broader issue and includes issues of ethnicity, religion, disability, socio-economic class, to name a few.
"We started our diversity and inclusion programme with gender, which is the easiest to begin with. Only after we went through various phases of learning, knowledge, denial and then willingness to address multiple issues, did we embrace the concept of having to change the entire culture at work," said Wim Elfrink, chief globalisation officer of Cisco. He was speaking at the firm’s "Connected Women Leadership Forum" that celebrated "women as innovators".
It is a well known fact that women can multi-task but still have to work twice as hard as men at the workplace to prove themselves, pointed out Vani Kola, MD of IndoUS Capital Advisors.
Vani has had a hard time dealing with traditional over-protective mindsets of parents who even negotiate for Venture Capital funding on behalf of their smart daughters. That’s not all, even at team meetings women who are culturally conditioned to let the men do all talking, hesitate to speak. Revealing a case of cultural conditioning, Rama N S, Development Centre Head, Infosys, said: "We have to ask women for their opinion at most meetings. Otherwise they are quite content to just listen and observe the proceedings."
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