Whose world is it anyway?

   ‘We live in a man’s world’ goes the common refrain. Each time I end a late night phone conversation with my best friend when discussing marriage, family or work we conclude that there still exists an implicit gender bias in today’s ‘emerging’ India. Not confined to the rural areas or the impoverished population, the bias is visible across India. From the villages where a son is treasured as an asset, an incremental working hand on the fields, to the glitzy offices in urban India, where women candidates are looked at with skepticism since career is perceived as secondary to family, the prejudice is ubiquitous. Five million girls were subjected to female infanticide between 1986 and 2001 in India. To prevent this, sex determination for pregnant women is illegal across the country. Even in seemingly modern families, women are pressured to produce a son to continue the family legacy. The bias is universal; its manifestations vary significantly.

   I hail from a Marwari family and was raised in Bombay, the epicenter of urban India. I too faced the brunt of these biases. I was sent to a unisex school despite procuring admission to the best coed school in the city. Academics were never stressed upon in my family though my grandfather distributed sweets when my older brother scored a 70 something percent in his tenth grade board exams. There was no such celebration when I graduated with considerably higher scores. After school, my mother encouraged me to enroll in extracurricular classes: flower arrangement, paper craft, cooking, painting, embroidery etc. I tried my at hand all these ladylike activities and failed miserably to her chagrin. I then focused on classes in finance, exports, accounting etc., took the SAT and forced them (with a sound measure of emotional drama) to let me go to America to study. My family resisted. I persisted. It wasn’t that my mother didn’t harbor ambitions for me. She did have a plan, a dream for me. She dreamt of me marrying a financially stable man, taking care of him and bringing up his children. At 17, this sounded like a nightmare. I had to leave home.

   Ever since, I have been focusing on the positives of the gender bias and have tried to use it to my advantage. Yes, I did leave for America at 17, dismissing my mother’s dream and shouldering minimal responsibility. My brother on the other hand, started going to my dad’s office the day he finished school. Being the only son, he was solely in charge of managing and growing the family business. While I spent the next four years living independently, delving into various academic courses, studying French in Paris and travelling extensively over the holidays, my brother lived an existence largely limited to his workplace. My realm of possibilities extended far beyond his. No, he was never forced into doing this, nor did he vehemently oppose it. It was an implicit submission to what was expected of him. He merely complied with the norms. The bias worked in my favor.

   Upon graduating, I found myself amidst a new incarnation of the same bias. I applied to a quantitative fixed income asset management firm in New York. After several rounds of grueling interviews, I got the job. On the first day, we were introduced to our group. Shocked, I realized that there was only one other woman on my team of 12. The analytical side (primary focus) of the business was heavily skewed towards male workers, while some administrative tasks had female employees. Through discussions in the cafeteria, I was told that the firm was really trying to improve its male/female ratio but could not find suitable women for the job. My first reaction was self-doubt. I wondered if I had got the job simply because I was a woman. Was I just the token female representation in the team? Once our work assignments were handed out, the answer was clear. We were all treated at par and given equal responsibilities, so there was no bias whatsoever at work. However, the firm was unable to attract enough female candidates and hence it was reasonable to assume that all else remaining equal, a woman would be selected over a man to improve the firm’s diversity.

   The diversity factor shot to prominence once again when I was applying to Business school in America to pursue my MBA. The Harvard MBA program has about 30 percent female representation. The administration is eager to improve this ratio, without compromising on quality. Here again, I believe, my gender served as critical role in my acceptance to the university. No, I didn’t just get in because I was a woman with good test scores. My gender just made my struggle thus far seem harder since I had defied several norms to reach there. Also, by the age of 27, fewer intelligent and accomplished women choose to pursue an MBA since other priorities arise, making the program comparatively less competitive for women than it is for men.

   Clearly, I have been a benefactor of the gender bias at the most crucial junctures of life. However, I am not endorsing the status quo or attempting to rationalize the bias. I’m merely stating that while any form of prejudice should be admonished and punished, there exist certain stereotypes that women can use to their advantage. After all, it is not easy to be a man, in a man’s world either.