Women in the workplace: The most important career decision a woman makes
Just a couple of days ago, a friend quoted Sheryl Sandberg from Lean In. I'd never heard this before, and it annoyed me the first time I heard it. The statement seemed to place undue importance on marriage for a woman. The next day, another friend shared an article on Marty Ginsburg, RBG's amazingly supportive spouse. It got me thinking about the impact a spouse, particularly, a husband has on a woman's career, and I realized the enormous truth in that statement. This article is attempt to chronicle my own experiences, as well as others' whose lives I have witnessed, and the conclusions one can draw from them.
Growing up in India, I was introduced early on to the notion that a woman's life and therefore her career, largely revolved around her family- husband, children, the likes. I witnessed first hand hordes of educated working women relocate at the time of their marriage, leaving behind family, hard earned careers and everything else they'd worked to build. Because, obviously, the wife has to move to the husband's place. How can it be otherwise? Oh, she works? So what? I'm sure she can find a job in the new city, close to home. (And mind you, I'm talking about first world problems here. I'm not even touching upon the reality that several women are still not "allowed" to work after marriage.)
What horrified me was the fact that several women accepted this as the norm. Now, hear me out for a moment. I'm not being prescriptive and saying that women who give up their jobs and relocate to their husband's cities are wrong. Women are free to decide this for themselves, and there is no wrong or right decision. What annoys me is the fact that most women choose this option only because "that's how things are". But if you think about it, that's how things are is not a good enough answer. Several women think about talking this through with their to-be husband because they care about their careers, but dismiss the thought immediately because of many reasons. Some of them are: he earns more/ he's in a more senior position; therefore his career is more important than mine. My answer to this: He might earn more or be in a more senior position, but that does not automatically make his career more important than yours. What matters here is how much you think your current job matters to you and whether your life partner concurs with that. If you place great value on your career and he thinks his career is "always" more important, imagine the kind of situations you'd face after marriage.
Drawing from my parents' example, when they got married, my Mom was working in Tamil Nadu, and my Dad in Karnataka. Shortly after, he left to the US and she was posted to a different city in Tamil Nadu. After a year, he came back, and they continued to work in different cities, meeting up once in a couple of months. My mother worked all over Tamil Nadu, and my Dad all over India. Years later, they decided to stay together, and my Mom moved to Bangalore, which was where my Dad had found a "stable" job. My mom did not know Kannada at that point. Finding work as a doctor without knowing the local language is a challenge. She learnt the language and then found a job.
Many years after I'd first heard this story, I asked my Mom:
Why did you move to Bangalore? Did you guys discuss relocating to where you were posted?
She said: No, of course not. Your dad had been so nice to me and let me work wherever I wanted. Now that it was time for us to settle down, I had to move to where he and his parents were.
In other words, the bar was set so low that both my parents though my father was being magnanimous in letting her work wherever she wanted for a few years.
When my parents started the marriage search process for me, I told them: I am not moving to wherever he is. I want to stay in Bangalore, and I want to be close to my office. They laughed and told me: Sure, sure, but convince him, not us. I'll admit, back then, the thought of convincing someone I'd just met to move to my city was daunting. But I was still haunted by the unfairness of the other extreme: I'd have to give up almost all of my present life and embrace a new one, whereas for the guy, so much would remain unaltered. Same city. Same job. Same house. Living with parents. I came to realize that I would resent such an agreement.
Finally, I decided that I would find someone who already lived in my city, and close to my workplace. That way, I could see this decision as one that was based on logic and convenience, rather than "the norm". Fortunately for me, I did find a spouse who satisfied all of those constraints, and I haven't felt like I had to sacrifice a lot. I still had the same job, lived in the same city, and now my 35km commute was cut down to 5km. I was, in fact, happy about moving closer to work. :)
The next important point is the difference a supportive spouse can make in your life. Again, support can be misconstrued to mean different things. Therefore, let me first clarify what I mean when I say support. Oftentimes, many husbands say they support their wives' careers. What they mean by that is: Sure, you can work at your job. But of course, I also expect you to take care of the house, the chores and the kids. Those are your responsibilities. Apart from that, you are free to pursue your ambitions.
This is not support. This is the reason women drop out of their careers after marriage/kids. This is why women feel forced to choose between a career and their personal lives. Because let's face it. There are only so many hours in the day. Every hour that she takes out for a chore, she's taking it out of her career. Every hour that she prioritizes work is an hour lost on the personal front. It is an eternal battle, and many women choose to instead pick one and do it well. But the problem is not with the woman here. It is with the man who thinks that his only responsibility is his career, and his partner needs to take care of everything from the chores to the kids to her career.
What I mean by support is having a partner who's as invested in your life and career as you yourself are. Someone who's willing to restructure your life together to meet your common goals. Someone who doesn't resent you if you choose to prioritize your career. Someone who looks at household chores and raising a family as a joint responsibility.
I have so many anecdotes to share on this. When I married my husband, I was only 6 months into my first job. I was on a steep learning curve, and I also took on a lot of work, both by design and by choice. Initially, I struggled to manage my personal life with work. Several weekends we'd have planned to drive down to Mysore on a Friday evening. And inevitably, no matter how well I planned my week, something urgent would pop up on Friday morning. I would feel ever so pressurized, not knowing what to choose, and I'd try so hard to balance both. I knew that if I we started late, traffic would peak, and my husband would have a horrible 4-5 hour drive. On the other hand, I couldn't leave work unfinished and walk away. I'd choose to work straight from 7.30 to 5.30, without any food or water. Even then, I'd be an hour late, and I'd meet my husband feeling guilty. He was horrified the first time he heard this: What do you mean you didn't eat!? And immediately, he'd stop somewhere on the road and make sure I had something.
This has not happened once or twice but quite regularly. Once, we had similarly planned to visit Mysore right before a festival, and something very important came in that morning. I kept working, asking my husband to wait for a while. Hours passed, and I was still working. It had started raining outside, and my husband called and told me that we wouldn't be going because he couldn't drive in such weather. I remember looking at how sad he was that day, and I cried myself to sleep. But while my husband was honest in telling me about how sad he felt that we couldn't go, he also made it clear that he didn't blame me for prioritizing work. He told me that he trusted my judgement.
Similarly, with vacations, visiting relatives, functions. I have said no to so many things. But my point here is that I had a safe space to say that without being judged or mocked. My spouse understood the effort and the cost of having a great career, and he respected my choices. And oftentimes, my choices took away something from him too, something that he could have been a part of and enjoyed if not for me. But he made those sacrifices for me, and didn't begrudge me in the process. Today, if I have a marriage that hasn't fallen apart, it is entirely because I have had the fortune to find someone who cares deeply about my goals and makes sure to help me reach them.
This was also very evident during the covid lockdown, when several working women lost the privilege of having house help, and suddenly had that burden fall on them. I too would have fallen into that group, if not for the fact that my husband shared all the load equally. He even took on chores I hated to make my life easier. I was in the middle of a career transition then, and if not for the support I got from him, I don't know if I'd be where I am today. I still struggled a lot to just get through the days, and every single day was grueling, so I can only imagine what it was like for women who had to handle all of it alone.
When I was thinking of pursuing a PhD, my husband encouraged me. I was initially skeptical, and reminded him of the sacrifices it entailed: No weekends, very few vacations, less visits to our parents, lesser time together, lesser income. He told me that he thought I was worth all that sacrifice. Today, we have chosen to move close to where I study, which makes it a round trip commute of 60km per day for my husband. Knowing Bangalore traffic, this is a crazy amount of time everyday. He has happily signed up for it, because he is ready to do what it takes for me to succeed. In essence, every bit of my success is directly correlated to how much effort and sacrifice and cooperation my partner has put into our marriage. Not one day or two, but every single one.
I compare that level of support to a lukewarm half-hearted gesture of verbal support, and I can see the difference it makes. My point in writing this article is to make more women aware of this distinction, and help them make an educated choice in who they choose to share their life with, especially those women who are passionate about what they do for a living. If you choose to marry, marry wisely, because it can transform your life, for better or for worse. As it is famously said, "Don't marry your glass ceiling."
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