Maggie Inbamuthiah
The M word struck me again today.
M word is deadly. M word is ominous. It can strike you at any moment, hit you totally unexpected and pull the rug from under your feet when you are least ready for losing a precious resource from your team.
If the picture on this article did not give it away, here it is -the M word I am referring to is Marriage. A girl in my team quit today citing that she needed to spend time in her home town with her family and help with her marriage process.
Women forums talk a lot about balancing family needs with work, provide advice and tips on handling your maternity break and return to work and offer options on flexi-working. How the act of getting married impacts careers is not a common topic and I am not sure if it is because it is cultural. But as I have personally experienced, this is a serious issue with few solutions, if any.
Let me give some background for those who might find it culturally alien. In India and probably in many Asian cultures, women are expected to marry. Arranged or otherwise, the age limit for marriage is usually set and there is tremendous social pressure during that period for women to prioritize marriage over career. If a potential groom is arriving to meet you, you are expected to cancel your official meetings and show up for the man. And if the stars align and you like each other, the girl is expected to quit her job immediately to prepare for the wedding and even be ready to move to a different country to start life with her husband.
When a woman chooses someone for herself (as opposed to an arranged marriage), she faces another stigma. There could be a whole drama depending on how far apart culturally the pair is and how conservative the parents are. The dominating notion is that the girl "dared" enough to choose her own match because she was working!!
I am not happy admitting this, but reflecting back, my own story was not very different. I disappeared from my job for two months without even informing my Manager because I had to sort out things and marry the guy I wanted to. After life's usual 180-degree turns and now at the receiving end, I can only imagine what my Manager suffered having been forced into refil my role.
The theme underpinning all this is the expectation that the woman uproots her career to make room for marriage and the husband, while the man's career journey is relatively uninterrupted. It is not weird to hear guys living away from India tell their Moms, "I have 3 weeks off during Christmas. Please select the right girl for me so that I can come see her, marry her and bring her back with me within 3 weeks" .
I have turned this over in my mind over quite a bit and here are my suggestions to make this less harmful than this usually turns about to be:
My dear girls -
It is perfectly ok to tell your parents and your future spouse that you need time to close things at work before rushing to get married. The man is going to spend the rest of his life with you. Two months to bring closure to your current job should be ok. Professionally, it allows you to do the right thing and not burn any bridges. Personally, you are showing your partner that you care about who you are and what you do. That will set a trend for all the future career decisions to come.
I go back to saying this - but reach out to other women professionals and discuss their learnings from this difficult period. You will be surprised to learn from what they have to share and it might even spark some good ideas in you.
Have a frank conversation with your Manager or your HR Business Partner. Understand your options. There could be other roles or working options that might suit you better at this time.
My fellow employers -
Your best option is to understand the situation and try to work out a solution that is mutually beneficial. May be flexi-time or part time until she is ready to focus completely on the job. She might still move to Timbuktu with her husband, but you have bought time to plan a transition.
Create an open channel. This is a sensitive and very personal topic and women are not comfortable discussing this. Most women do not find it professional to discuss this an issue with their peers or higher -ups. So come up with some way for them to voice this out as an issue. That will help pave way to constructive discussions to come up with solutions that work.
Will leave you with that thought and see you in 2016. Happy New Year!
The views expressed are individual and not necessarily MTC Global also share the same views.
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