DC discusses Satya Nadella’s comment on pay hikes for women
Satya Nadella CEO Microsoft
Hyderabad: Women can’t really win: Kalpana Kannabiran, Director, Council for Social Development:
Women continue to face all kinds of discrimination at the workplace in India, in the US and other parts of the world. While there are violent forms that this discrimination may take sexual harassment for instance there are also more deep-rooted insidious ways in which discrimination seep into workplaces denying women equal opportunity.
For instance, women in science in the West faces extreme discrimination that is also completely invisible in the structure of scientific establishments.
Women in premier universities in India face harassment and vindictiveness of unimaginable levels at the hands of male colleagues.
Often, this unfair treatment is justified on grounds of work performance. But women can never win. Those that lie low are blamed for inefficiency, and those that chase careers are stigmatised as aggressive and insensitive. So women can never really win.
This is not only about the IT sector. It is about all places that offer employment to women, right from care workers to Microsoft techies.
The trouble with the IT sector is that the mirage of modernity dress, work environment, gated workspaces, language and pay scales is so out of proportion with other ordinary workplaces, that we imagine that it will be the liberating factor for men. but more importantly for women.
But cultures must be crafted democratically through negotiation, resistance and disobedience on the part of women, as has been done historically. We have forgotten that IT environments are also culturally driven.
In every single workplace in the world, a raise or a promotion is a claim to equal opportunity. It must be made by the person concerned and assessed by the mechanisms in the workplace based on the objective record. Whet-her or not there are internal mechanisms of assessment, the first step is for the employee to register his/her eligibility.
Of course, while it is perfectly all right for men to leap up the professional ladders with multiple claims and it is all right for the boys’ clubs that the managements are, to register men’s claims even before they are made, women must, in true feminine fashion, stand aside and wait.
If the raise does not come your way, as a woman you must take recourse to the spiritual rather than the material. This is not about Indian men alone.
I am sure there are equivalents of good karma and bad karma arguments in every culture. The sad part of the episode is that these comments were made at a top gathering of women in technology. So Satya Nadella was the outsider really it is puzzling how he forgot that.
But then again, how often do we see men who have made a mistake turn around with an unconditional apology? There is a silver lining.
Nadella must be forgiven: Srikant Reddy Palem, Politician, Convener Jan Palana Party and chairman of Palred Technologies Limited:
Satya Nadella, while speaking at a conference related to women, made a mistake, a fairly small one. But it was blown out of proportion. However, his intensions were good.
The obvious negative connotation has been picked up by the media in general, and social media in particular. In all fairness, after the statement, Nadella offered an apology.
I have viewed the content of the interview. Now, given his background, and after the apology, he certainly deserves forgiveness. The issue has drawn undue attention.
Nadella is a Telugu man who has risen to become the CEO of the world’s largest IT company. Do forget and forgive his minor mistakes when he apologises. If we go into the issue and his actual comments, we see that the issue is about pay rise of women working in the IT industry.
As per the global average, 30 per cent of the workforce in the IT industry is made up of women. However the percentage in technical jobs is less than 15. The discrimination of women employees in the industry exists, and we must accept it.
Though we have several women who have risen to top leadership positions in large IT companies, including Hewlett-Packard, and non-IT firms such as Pepsi and Biocon, discrimination against the fairer sex continues in a subtle manner.
Satya Nadella was honest enough to accept it on a public platform, and not be hypocritical like many others. Even in the US, the salaries of female tech employees are 90 per cent of their male counterparts. This discrimination could be higher in India.
At the same time, we all accept that one of the greatest virtues of a woman is her patience and it is clearly embodied in her role as a mother. Satya Nadella has only asked women to exercise patience, which is the inherent strength of women, while demanding a pay raise.
It may also lead to earning goodwill and trust in the organisation in the long run and it is possible that such patience combined with perseverance may be better rewarded in the long term than demanding an immediate pay raise.
However, it was perhaps inappropriate to say you earn good karma in the process. It is also possible that he has been speaking from this own experience: His long innings at Microsoft has been rewarded better than job hoppers. Or the employees who negotiate their pay aggressively.
Let us also look at this comment against the larger background of atrocities against women in India. Several political personalities, media personalities and socialites have made extremely insensitive and objectionable comments against women in terms of their dressing, crime and also rape.
All of them have been forgotten even if not forgiven. In the light of this, we should forget and forgive this comment.
( Source : dc correspondent )
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