India has the worlds largest pool of professional stay-at-home moms

02Jun08

Sue Shellenbarger in her article “ Stay-at-home Moms Fill a niche”, Mint Lounge Satuday May 31st 2008, writes of the ever-elusive professional moms on the playground or PTA circuit. Groups of women who can network and put together professional teams ready to handle the likes of high volume investment portfolios or extensive ad campaigns at the drop of a hat. Is this strictly an American or Western phenomenon? What then of the Indian professional woman, mother, daughter, wife, bahu?

Middle and upper class Indian families have long stressed the importance of an education for their children. In Britain, women of Indian origin are the only ethnic minority to have as much or more education as their Caucasian counterparts. With more Indian professional women in the workplace than ever before and a massive economic boom, we seem on the verge of looking for new solutions to problems that our western counterparts have already been dealing with for a while.

The question of how to balance our professional identity with our cultural past arises. In-laws or parents that need to be cared for and children that need to be tended to are a universal component of family life. Where the Indian professional differs from her western counterpart is in the options that are available to her. The fact still remains that no matter how far the Indian professional has come in having her own career and independence, there are still cultural expectations that keep her linked to the home. Recent legislation in Mumbai requiring day care facilities are clearly reflective of an increasing demand for new alternatives, although it could be argued that this legislation is piecemeal, and too little to have any real effect. With higher expectations to be at home to care for her family and with much less support in the form of day care or housing facilities for the elderly, than her Western counterparts enjoy, professional women at home are quite common in India.

As Sue Shellenbarger indicates in her article, women are happy to work for a reduced fraction of their previous salaries to keep their skills current and in return to have the flexibility to work on their own terms. Avtar in Chennai has been providing professional women managers for a while now and Tata’s second career pilot program saw demand far exceed what was expected. And more recently, gharkamai.com is filling the gap by developing an online portal where employers can find home base professional women who want to do high quality project based work. Indicating that there are many women out there looking for alternatives to the standard Indian shift work that involve not just lengthy work hours but that seems also to have become the norm.

Why not then consolidate this playground mum network? Project work for stay at home professionals seems to be a feasible solution. By providing women with time bound work they do not become bound to any specific organization longer than they wish to be. They are also able to network with varied organizations and broaden their skill base whilst doing so. All the while managing to maintain a work life balance. On the flip side organizations are able to tap professionals for a fraction of the cost than when the same individuals were working for large consultancies, without having to compromise on quality. Growing organizations or departments also stand to gain when deciding whether a new role is the right fit for them; or when deciding where to allocate limited resources.

As the Indian economy continues to grow, the question of where to find quality skilled labour is a constant battle. The ability to offer flexible work options can well mean gaining a competitive edge as a result of having employed skilled professionals. As such the niche area that Sue Shellenbarger writes about is an area of impending growth in India. It is also possibly a more culturally specific solution to women who wish to juggle the demands of pursuing a career and fulfilling other duties expected of them within the Indian context.

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