Women In The Workplace : An Old Story Seldom Told.

If you are a Indra Nooyi or Ginni Rometti or Meg Whitman to name some of the world’s best known CEOs, their age is neither a conversation starter nor a deal breaker. Their incredible minds, inspirational addresses and perhaps their immaculate power dressing are what matter.  

In India while we actively and happily participate in global conversations about cryto-currencies, artificial intelligence #metoo campaign, womens’ rights, women breaking the glass ceiling etc, we distinctly lack enthusiasm in leading conversations about older women in the workplace. We boast of our demographic dividend, revere our ageing politicians, worship a pantheon of goddesses while slyly indulging in female foeticide. Our cauldron of contradictions and hypocrisy is apparently bottomless. And this extends to the women in the workplace narrative as well. We blithely borrow from patter in popular magazines to breathlessly state to some hapless woman who is clearly trying not to be an ‘age’ victim …. …oh rest assured my dear 50 is the new 30 and 60 is the new 40 and so on …. all in cocktail conversations in sanitised environs of self-consciously modern drawing rooms.

Like marketers elsewhere in the world, we worship at the altar of our millennial population and our aha! moments are when we crack the code of the latest pop culture movement.  Because that’s how we get our marketing brilliance validated. And of course these great ideas come from a millennial, but where else. If we need to stretch a point, we can sometimes grudgingly accommodate the odd notions of cool from the sauve, smartly ageing man.  Women in their fifties or those approaching 60 can never, please note never have great ideas or brainwaves that are relevant to the hip Gen X leave alone Gen Z. 

Men and younger women in the Indian workplace believe the following unwritten tenets are never to be challenged or reviewed.  Woman of a certain age are unlikely to be fit and therefore need to be moth balled and treated as having one foot in the geriatric ward. So let’s instead put on a show of good manners and say “Yes Ma’am , No Ma’am”  …. in respectful tones heavily laced with derision, making sure to  draw a clear line that is never to be crossed.  Elderly ladies, whatever be their coolness quotient will always be….well ‘old’. And no, please refrain from displaying your sharp agile mind or your smartness in coming up with solutions faster than younger others.    

If by some chance of good karma and or good genes you display physically minimal signs of wear and tear or what’s worse, look like a million bucks, then the word is out – she must be spending a fortune on face jobs which in the office water cooler gossip routine is akin to smoking up or snorting coke. The temerity of the woman to possibly try and compete in the looks department with the girl gang is unpardonable. So let’s put a firm lid on it and even if we are constrained to pay a compliment let’s always preface it with …. For your age you umhhh.. look kinda ok.

The older woman colleague may have good ideas, several in fact, but it wouldn’t serve us well to acknowledge that. So, lets just attribute it to the decades of experience she has had, which not-so subtly reinforces that she has been too long in the field. We will be of course be very gracious and secretly heave a sigh of relief if she decides to drop dead or call it quits. We will plan and give her a hip send off party that is awash with hashtags, Instagram posts and other millennial social media detritus.  Its a young, young world ! 

What confounds one is that the same nay sayers will salute and proudly claim Nooyi as their own or clap when Padma Warrior strides confidently on to a podium to stake her place as a successful professional , age notwithstanding. That is in an alien land and foreigners have decided to recognize their merit and crown their abilities.  The world is happy to entrust the running of a country to an Angela Merkel or have Christine Lagarde steer IMF. Nobody dare suggest that they are too old or imply they don’t have it in them anymore.  That would be blasphemous ! So lets join in the chorus from the sidelines. We will not imitate but only applaud from afar.   But why pick on celebrity CEOs ? There are thousands of successful women professionals the world over who are in their fifties or sixties who are celebrated for the work they do and known to party as hard as their male colleagues knocking back tequila shots with gay abandon. 

There is another slightly insidious ploy that is perpetrated on older professionals, particularly women. It goes by the very haloed title of “mentor”. If you aren’t careful once you’ve crossed a certain age , you may suddenly wake up one morning to find yourself addressed as “mentor”. Now this can be baffling especially since you know you are not an angel investor or VC, not even a senior professor who qualifies as a doctoral thesis guide.  Suddenly many unanswered questions will assail you, the foremost being - why are you now a mentor to so many people not necessarily of your choosing, when you don’t have the slightest inclination to nurture talent right now.  Even the most well meaning and well intentioned professionals opt for this gambit. Because after all these are senior women who should now stop   creating inconvenient road blocks in the sprint to the top of younger, cooler, hipper colleagues. And by turning them into mentors, however unwilling and reluctant they may be, you have hit on a sure-fire method of eliminating undesired competition. What’s unsaid is ‘listen you’ve had your time in the sun, now move over and be grateful that we’ve kicked you up with mentor title.’  Some very fortunate ones are publicly called out and recognized for their Lifetime Contribution!

Essentially while we in India have been leading the discourse on women in the workplace, including encouraging women entrepreneurs and gushing about successful women who come into the limelight, some aspects are left deliberately unaddressed because we can tolerate the mandatory older woman professional on the Board of companies, but not ready to encounter her daily in the workplace corridors