What women want: Reservation or Egalitarianism?

A call for reserving one-third of the seats for women in Parliament is not unique to India alone. Similar demands have been made and laws passed to that effect in Europe. Viviane Reding, the EU’s Justice Commissioner hopes to have 30% women on European Boards by 2015 and 40% by 2020. French Law requires 40% seats to be reserved on the Board by 2017 for women.  Norway has a quota since 2006. Similar quotas are expected to come across all EU countries soon as European Parliament has passed a directive to that effect.  With this sudden wave of quotas in Boards and Parliament, an economic and socio-legal analysis of their effect becomes important.

It is rather true that women are grossly underrepresented in legislatures and boards of companies. This under-representation on grounds of equity and a call for a more egalitarian society calls for reservation. From an economic perspective, the question arises if it is efficient. More importantly, from an egalitarian lens too (the goal that the legislation seeks to promote), is it good for women themselves in the long run.

 The emerging power of women in the workforce is a recent phenomenon. Earlier more confined to the safe precincts of home or traditionally occupied in women-friendly jobs such as a teachers, nurses and doctors; women found it convenient to synchronize their work-life balance in these traditional women-oriented set-ups & professions. Even today, it is not uncommon in a typical household(an Indiand home for sure!), to expect the women to perform all household chores and work at the same time. So to create the work-family life balance (though one often wonders why it is more emphatically expected of  women alone), women resort to the safer havens of un-ambitious, steady professions.

With changing attitudes, more liberal families and parental support; the outlook has begun to drift. And women are taking increasingly challenging and time-demanding professions. A male-dominated structure of the corporate set-up & legal profession makes it difficult and extra long for women to attain the same stature and pay levels. It is often a common complaint and is a proven fact that women are under-paid, under-promoted and are struck somewhere in the middle of the ladder. Reservations are an oft-suggested panacea for the problem. But the question emerges if it is the best available remedy? There are two important problems that arise with this. Women, who will make their way to the top; even with a little help of reservation or even on their own merits completely, will be seen as incompetent figure-heads who simply got an important promotion or board stature, by virtue of being women.

An important aspect of leadership is the respect and acceptance that one has because of their merits, competence or charisma. With reservation, this opportunity to gain acceptance is lost at once for women. Secondly, from an economic perspective, it might be inefficient. Often just to fill up the posts, in-competent people (women in the present instance); might be promoted to important positions. This affects the efficiency, the productivity and bottom line of the company. At the Board level, important strategic decisions need to be taken. A lack of exposure, an inexperience in the corporate grinding and the missing struggle, which competent people have to go through to earn their positions will get reflected in such reserved representation. This will affect the stakeholder and shareholder fortunes. Moreover, some competent people, who would have otherwise occupied the positions will miss it just because they are from the wrong gender, male gender in case of a reservation loving society. Exactly the same way, as competent women almost always lost it, just because they were women;  apprehensively and undesirably now it will indeed be a case of reverse-discrimination.

No matter how skewed is the representation, a catapulation to the top should be based on meritocracy. Reservations will tilt the shift towards mediocracy. Economically speaking, it is inefficient for the company, the parliament, as the case may be and certainly for the society as a whole.

The problem however is that in the present backdrop, without any legal or social mechanism, the meritocracy based competition will be meaningless. The question then arises is if reservation is not a solution, then what is. A good solution perhaps is to create a boardroom conducive to women. Simply put, this means a gender-neutral corporate world. Look at the corporate world. The language derived from the military is sexist and alpha-male. How we talk about competition, predatory pricing and shareholder wealth clearly reflects; that this definitely is not a women’s world. A women’s world would focus more on the stakeholders’, be more feminine with an approach to sustainability rather than the bottom-line. And that is indeed desirable in the present context with increased focus on sustainability as a means to attain the goal of triple bottom line: the people, the planet and the profits.

Secondly, on a more social front; there needs to be a change in the mental set-up, the outlook and the perceptions.  On a personal front, a women undoubtedly(and in a sense pleasantly) has more responsibilities towards the family. She is a mother, a wife, a daughter. All the roles are demanding. Motherhood perhaps is the most taxing in terms of time that a women has to talk off from her career life to give birth to her baby and through all his/ her childhood years and thereafter. Except for certain periods, when a women really needs to take a leave to bring a new life to the world; most women desire to work with flexible working hours with increased commitment to work once the child starts growing up. On a professional front, such special needs of women deserve particular attention; considering that a women delivers not just a child; but by bringing a well-groomed individual; she contributes a value ‘human resource’ to the society. Moreover, it is a well proven fact that well-educated, working and independent women bring up their children well. This then is a women’s special contribution that deserves special social recognition in the form of mother-friendly laws to help her create a work-life balance. For single mothers, this can be even more demanding. And for mothers bringing up a child with her partner; she needs greater cooperation from him. The point is some women might want to get back to work immediately or after some time after giving birth to a child; depending on individual case and personal preferences. In such a case, the laws should enable either of the parents (and not just the mother), to take time off from work without any prejudice to their future career prospects. Socially, there needs to be an acceptance of this ‘feminity’(as opposed to feminism) and ‘family life’, a celebration of the same instead of creating hiccups for a mother to get back to work.  

An imprisoned 'talented' women duty-bound in the traditional stereotypes will only lead to an imbalanced society; society with women making it to top through reservation or a society without sufficient opportunity to help women create sufficient work-life harmony are all dangerous trends leading to an imbalanced society.