As Bahrain’s Indian-syllabus (CBSE) schools celebrate their teachers’ and students’ hard work and shining results in the school-leaving exams, it is once again clear that girls have swept the field since they outnumber boys among the toppers.
And this is not an Indian phenomenon – you can check the results of Indian, Bahraini, British GCSE and any other national syllabus school and you will find that it is a universal phenomenon everywhere.
But if you meet your school toppers two decades later, chances are the boys are well-ensconced in middle-to upper-management jobs.
And the girls? Those system toppers who made the headlines with their brilliance and re-shaped the school and college results stats? Now, this is going to bring me complaints aplenty that I am crying doom at a time of celebration – but the reality is, while women and men are practically neck-and-neck up until the edges of the corporate jungle’s middle, after their mid-thirties, many women’s careers take a slower route to the top.
Don’t get me wrong. Women still find their way to the boardrooms and the CEO chair. But their path there is marked by many detours – moving to another state or country to accommodate their spouse’s career or sacrificing a sure-fire promotion for motherhood (or increasingly, these days, primary caregiver to one’s ageing elders). All of these are noble family commitments that women give themselves to unstintingly and which does not mar the career graph of most men.
How many men have you heard of who take three or four years’ paternity break while the mother chases the top corporate spot? And if a couple moves because of the woman’s career, you can be sure the man will only do so if he has an equally rewarding career opening in the new place, whereas women are not wired to say, “Look, I’ve built a great career here, let’s give long-distance relations a shot till you can come back to base.”
Leave the social dynamics aside. What about pay parity when all else is equal – the qualifications, the work load and the results? According to the UN, women still earn 77 cents for every dollar men earn for work of equal value – with an even wider wage gap for women with children. So much so, that there is even an International Equal Pay Day, celebrated on September 18, to build on long-standing efforts towards the achievement of equal pay for work of equal value.
It is estimated that only 28 per cent of women employed worldwide get paid maternity leave, despite all the lip-service paid to the sacred role of mothers in nurturing humanity.
And the whole scenario of coming back into the workspace ‘after a career pause’ is a peculiarly female issue that men hardly face.
In face of the great results by the Girls of ’25, we should help them continue their success stories by teaching both girls and boys the mainstreaming of a gender perspective which can rewrite the values of the future.
meeraresponse@gmail.com
&uuid=(email))