88 November 2014 www.womanthismonth.com she says Having Your Crown and Wearing It Too by BEHNAZ SANJANA The decades-old debate about women, career and kids resurfaced some time ago when a corporate queen publicly bared her heart and spoke the truth. Is there ever going to be common ground when it comes to the role of women in society? Indra Nooyi, the chairperson and CEO of PepsiCo, the largest multinational food and beverage conglomerate in North America, ranks 13th on Forbes’ World’s 100 Most Powerful Women in 2014. In a tête-à-tête at the recent Aspen Ideas Festival, she said she’s “not sure” her two children think of her as a good mother. Indra said that women pretend to have it all, but have to constantly choose between the call of raising kids or fuelling a career. She received a lot of flak for calling a spade a spade. Feminists frowned at her apparent anti-feminism; corporate honchos voiced their displeasure at her supposed discouragement to the younger generation of women, who dream big. Women can be extremely committed to their jobs. They bring a different perspective to the workplace — a positive one. When paired with male counterparts, they fare equally, or sometimes even better. But then, they are more intuitively tuned in with their children and cannot always be substituted by their partners for a mommy cuddle or a listening ear. Children need their mothers a tiny bit more than they do their fathers. Sorry dads, we know you can be great with the kids too. However you don’t have the ‘mommy smell’; it’s the law of nature. Stay-at-home mothers face their own share of doubts and questions: Am I short-changing myself by sacrificing my career for my family? Are the roles I play limited within the walls of my home for my children? Am I good enough? They also seem to feel stifled at different points in their lives, wondering why they let all the in-born talent, education and skills they painstakingly acquired go down the drain. Whatever the scenario, women beat themselves up way too much over it. I find that it is women who make things difficult for women. Full-time mothers are tut-tutted at for being household bound and not ‘with the times’ by corporate tsarinas. Domestic goddesses deem working women to be part-time mothers — an idea not looked at very kindly anywhere in the world. Each group thinks they are doing ‘the right thing’. Women are an intelligent species, who can juggle many cupcakes all at once. They can make choices that are ‘right’ for themselves. Whatever the choice, it’s an uphill road. The last thing they need is the guilt that rides alongside on the path they have chosen, or for other women to judge their lives’ decisions. Whether we don a business suit each morning or slip into our jeans to run family errands, we are expected to be well-informed, fit, stylish 24x7, and bouncing off the walls with energy late into the evening. Yet they call it women’s liberation!
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