Manisha Girotra is one of the top executives in India. She is the India CEO of Moelis & Company, a Mumbai-based investment bank. In 2007, the famed Wall Street Journal placed her as one of the 50 Women to Watch in their annual survey. And as a working mother, she says her fight isn’t with her work but with gender equality.
Why is it that women have to struggle that much more in order to achieve success?
In a now-viral Humans of Bombay post, she says that having been brought up in a middle-class family, she always harboured the dream of making it big with her career. Despite the fact that many at her workplace thought she would quit after marriage, she has steadily climbed the corporate ladder and had a daughter along the way.
However, she also noticed the double standards that plague women in the workplace. She speaks about how her husband once had to go for a parent-teacher meeting because she was too busy and was actually applauded by the mothers there for being an involved parent.
She says, “He is the best man I could have ever asked for, but why does society place men on a higher pedestal? Isn’t he as responsible for her school and extracurricular activities as I am? Aren’t we equals?”
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Ultimately, she notes that it is time to stop judging women harshly. It doesn’t make someone a “bad mother” if they choose to pursue their careers and nor should men be put on a pedestal for being an equal co-parent in the upbringing of a child. The goal should be equality.
As she so eloquently puts it, “If we really want to progress, gender equality should be on top of the list — where men and women are equals, where a woman’s career is deemed as important as a man’s and where a man isn’t treated like god for being involved at school or in the house. Just basic equality.”
“I was raised in a middle class family that placed the most importance on education and being financially independent. …
Posted by Humans of Bombay on Saturday, March 11, 2017
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