 And with the same it's time for the first panel discussion of the day, the topic for this panel discussion. What are the factors affecting and influencing the gender equality in the PR and communications industry? And with a huge round of applause, I would like to welcome our panelists. Please welcome Akanksha Jain, Head Public Relations and Corporate Communications Bharat Pei. Prasadha Menon, Regional Communications Lead Airbnb India, South Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Can we have a huge round of applause for the lady? Thank you. Tahseen Zehdi, Head Communications, Sinjanta, India. Well, till the time we are waiting for the chairs to arrive. Why don't you all join us on the stage for a quick happy picture. And of course, the final panelist, please welcome Sudha Singh, Founder of the Purpose Room, requesting our panelists to kindly take the seats. And with the same, the moderator for this session, Mr. Girish Balachandra, Managing Director on Purpose. Let's give him a huge round of applause. Hi, can you hear me? Okay, great. Good morning everybody and thank you for making time to be here. Delighted to be the first panel. I think every year on Women's Day, you know, there are discussions around what and how much has changed the current challenges and approaches that could be taken to address gender inequality. Yet, India Inc. has miles to go before this is achieved. Closer to home in PR, a study on global women in PR revealed that although two thirds of the global PR industry are women, 78% of the CEOs of the top 30 PR agencies in the world are men and they occupy 62% of the seats in the boardroom. A 2019 Leanin.org survey found that 60% of male managers said they are uncomfortable with workplace activities like mentoring, socializing, or having one-to-one meetings with women. Against this backdrop, I'm delighted to be speaking with four fairly iconic women in PR about the factors influencing gender inequality. So to begin with, I'd like to request each of you to kindly introduce yourselves and share a personal experience of how you've experienced gender inequality at work. Hi everyone. I'm Akanksha Jain. I head PR and communications at Bharatpe. I've been in this industry for good 15, 16 years now. I've been with the startup world for good 10 years. So I've built a lot of brands, grounds up. This year has been very interesting. We have had the privilege to manage a lot of prices at Bharatpe and hopefully the dust has settled now. So to give a sense of my journey, I think it's been great. I find it more exciting to build brands that are new and young. And I hope to continue doing that from coming back to the topic. I think it's a very important point, having seen that I'm an engineer by education. So started seeing it when I started studying with about six girls and about 50 boys in this class. And when I came to the professional side of things on the agency side, I think you see a lot more women. So, you know, it is it is still more skewed towards women, if I would put it. But when when I started settling down in the industry moved on the corporate side, I saw a lot of challenges that women face and I would like to cite a couple of them, both from a women. When you report to women leader work and also when you report to males. So I've been asked, you know, questions like, why do you need a high. I mean we know you're a great performer why do you need so much money. I mean, what do you respond to that I don't know. I said I mean you don't ask that question to a guy but you ask a question to me I mean why do you need so much money you don't have to run the house. I mean these kind of questions. When you're sitting in a, I remember when I was leading PR and communications for a group of companies. I realized that I was the only woman in the room. I mean, there was a post event celebration and there were a whole bunch of men out there and I was the only woman. And obviously they were not very comfortable with the only woman sitting out there so they sent two guys to just sit with me and talk to me and the rest of them decided to kind of just have their own share of fun in talking about whatever they wanted to talk about. So these kind of situations keep happening all the time. And another interesting thing which I don't know a lot of women face or not face but I have phase in my journey is that you know I had a female leader. I thought it would be great working with her. I learned a lot. She had her own prejudices when it came to women who are not married, and I'm not. I had prejudices with women who don't have kids, and I obviously won't have. So she would be biased towards women who are married and who have kids and put all the work on women who are not married. So this is another kind of bias I have seen with some women leaders, because they feel that you know we're, I don't know, whatever I mean they think that we are not. We should be treated with additional work and not recognized enough. So I think just citing some of the examples. Hey, hi everyone. Hi everyone my name is Presidha Menon. I lead communications for Airbnb across India, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Being in the marketing and communication space now for about 16 years spent a considerable amount of my early days with a PR agency and then moved into the world of startups had the opportunity to work with some of the most exciting and challenging global brands and here I am today. You know when I, when I think about everything that our conscious said and you know about the topic that we are discussing today. It just kind of reminds me how much acute the situation is, and how much time it's going to take for things to get better for any of us. I want to reflect back. I took the decision to move to the US and work there for some time this was about two or three years after I got married. And starting from people at home to friends, everybody was like, Oh my God you're going to leave your husband behind and go and I'm like, of course I am. I'm making that choice and I'm super proud of it. There were some people who were like, Oh God, three years into marriage time to have a baby and I'm like, Yeah, my baby is my new career in the US. Did not definitely go well. I reached the US. The first person who met me at my office was like, Oh my God, you guys, you come from India and you can speak English. Yes, I can. Then the next question was, Oh, we didn't realize that women from India come and they take on marketing roles and communication roles and they know digital and social media. Usually people who come to the US from India are men, and they're usually the techies. So this is so surprising. It kind of continued to a situation where I remember I made a presentation which was to be presented to an American client and somebody in the room said, Hey, maybe we need a Brit voice and a male one preferably to present the presentation which was made by me. And let me be honest. I was quite intimidated at that time. So I did make slide notes. Remember slide notes used to do that. So I made slide notes for this gentleman. And he presented the deck and got of course all the appreciation that kind of continued till you know I had this coach there in the US this wonderful lady called Robin Kim. I met her and I told her that look, this is all I'm going through and I'm a woman of color and here's what's going on and there's just so much that one needs to deal with and she said but that's your choice, right? It's your choice. Do you want to deal with this? Or do you want to like do something about it? Are you going to be proud of the choices you've made and kind of stand up for it? Or are you going to keep listening to this? That kind of changed me a bit. I came back. I was working for a very, very renowned startup. Situations led me to get a promotion pretty much early into the game and interestingly my promotion was paused and I was put on an acting role for certain months because some people thought I was too young to take this role. I was a woman. How am I going to deal with the complexities and challenges that come with this role? This time I made sure I fought back. I got the role and then after getting the role I decided I don't want to work for an organization like this. I moved on and handed over the baton to a gentleman with gray hair and I hope he's doing well there. So that's a bit about my journey and my experiences. Good morning everyone. I'm Desim. So I started my career from PR agencies, then worked for NDTV over a decade. After NDTV I worked with the foundation for three years and then now I'm heading the communications department of a firm called Singenta India Private Limited. So with this experience of working in the agency then with a renowned news channel to a multinational NGO to a multinational MNC. Everywhere I will say one thing. Yes, there is a bias and women are always stopped to get into the boardroom to get into the leadership position. So I'll give you my example. For 10 years I was taking to NDTV for one simple reason. They had a crutch facility and the kids were very well taken care of. And I denied promotions twice because I told I want to 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. shift simply to take care of my kids. And at 7 p.m. after wrapping up all the work when I'll go home my colleagues and also the woman colleagues will look at me. Oh, madam has picked up the bag and now she's going home. What a cool shift she is on. But they were never aware that I denied promotions twice or thrice just because I wanted to take care of my family. So I feel that empowered women should always come forward and support women so we can create a change. Second thing I'll also say I have faced it at the foundation. There was a male colleague who was working there at the foundation and I joined as his line manager I was heading the department. So initially I used to call for a team meeting every day and I saw him take he was so hesitant and then he started giving it to back to me and stop taking instructions from me just because he learned that I'm his age. And I am on a leadership position. He had a lot of problem except accepting me as his manager. And finally I sat across with him on the table and I told him look. I'm not going to stick to the foundation for so long. I'm going to move on because I'm not taking the slow work culture at the foundation. So I want you to be equipped that when I leave you take that position instead of them hiring somewhere from outside. So that is when he understood but again coming back to my point that you know it's very difficult for men to accept women in leadership positions and there is where the gap is at any TV of course women are encouraged and they are given jobs at top level. But the problem is like in the TV if all the organizations support their woman workforce I think things are going to work wonders for them. And you are going to see a miracle because if you give a task to a woman. You see that they will put their heart and soul and give you the desired output and also the flexibility sometimes okay I will give time during the day to my family. But I will ensure I sit at midnight finish my project and put in all my efforts to make it look good so if that kind of effort is created. Yes, we will be in a women's situation again I'll give you an example of a friend who became friend later we met professionally she was an aeronautical engineer by profession. And now she's a fashion designer so you see the switch. She was she got married she had a child and then she had this pressure from her family that you are not taking care of your child she's get your child is getting your child because you're not feeding your child and she had erratic shifts at the airport. So she was and there was no facility to take the child. She had to quit her high flying job. Start a fashion designing studio do a course from scratch and create a room in her studio for her daughter show that so that she can bring her daughter along and take care of her. See, we have lost a professional and an article engineer because she was not provided with that kind of support, which she needed to excel in her career so I feel there should be a strong support system for the woman so that they can grow professionally and reach the boardroom woman do reach the executive level the middle level but they're never able to reach the boardroom because of these particular challenges which I have mentioned. So with that I'd like to stop stop thank you so much. Thank you. So there's been such. Yeah, we've heard such great experiences from my co panelists. And before I talk about my experience I just like everyone to consider the fact that we are all middle class and privileged people. But we still have an issue of inclusion and being included, whether it's in the workplace or getting pay equity or talking about, you know, boardroom and C sweet positions. So this is not even a cross section of the population this is middle class people with a certain amount of privilege, who are not able to still make it, and who still find challenges in their career in 2022. So my experience is that I have around three decades of experience. I started my career in India I worked with mudra I've worked with, and I moved to the UK with my family. And I worked with a multilateral organization there and then for personal reasons family reasons. I had to come back. I chose to come back to India to look after my parent. And I worked here again at that time with Peshnavi and then returned to the UK and to work. And the biggest challenge that I faced. I mean I never realized in my career at that point I'd say it was 2007. And I'd been working since 2004 that, you know, I was somehow being excluded, or I was facing challenges I think like most Indian women, you just tend to get on with your life. Whether it is looking after your family and your children and you know coping with your work it's your problem it's nobody else's problem. Even I went to the UK. And this was the second time when I was returning back in a senior leadership leadership role that I faced the challenge and I found myself, and I realized the challenges that minorities face. And I was. So I'm a parent. I was a mother to three adult children. I was a working woman. I'm a carer. I'm also a first generation British Indian and immigrant and a minority. And the intersectionalities coalesced for me at that point in time when I decided to return to the UK, where I found it's such a challenge to get a leadership role for myself. And when I was returning back to the UK I knew that I was going to take several steps down from the position that I'd held in India. And I had no problem with that because I wanted to be with my family and my children, but that itself was a huge challenge. And when I got a job with one of the top agencies in the UK. I was a partner there. I worked with a fantastic team, but I was in the margins. I was the only person of color in that team. The only woman and person of color in that team. I mean, there were other women, white women and white middle aged men. And I never got to do any work so I, but I hung around tenaciously doing small stuff, because I felt so insecure and so safe with the people who I thought were good people. They are good people. They just didn't recognize their bias that I never got to do any of the good work. You know, by that time I had around 25, 24, 25 years of experience advising some of the biggest global clients across the world, governments, clients, NGOs working with a multilateral organization. But the only thing that they would come to me with was if there was an issue to deal with India or if there was something to do with women. And those were few and far between. But it took me a lot of time to actually say, okay, I can't do this anymore. I need to step out. I need to stop trying to be safe in my environment and think of what I need to do next. It took me, I'd say, the better part of 15 months to lead that organization. And this because I thought those people were nice people. And I was in a bit of a, what do you say, you know, I went back to learning, I became a certified DEI trainer, I went to INSEAD, I became an advisor to Pradhan, because this time round I had decided that I was going to do all of the things that I had wanted to do, not that I was required to do, or because I felt that other people expected me to do those things. I wanted to be able to work in my passion in areas that were my passion projects. So I set up my consultancy and we advise clients on the intersection of purpose inclusion and ESG and sustainability communication. When you look at gender diversity, don't just look at it as gender diversity, think of all diversity. And you know, the tendency for all of us today is to conflate diversity with inclusion. Diversity is about numbers. This whole room is very diverse, but is it inclusive is what we need to think about. Why do you need so much money being being asked to take on an acting role because you may not be considered for the lead role as yet. Somebody made active choices to move on because of that. You would deny promotions because you wanted to maintain a good work-life balance and being excluded from leadership opportunities. I think I can safely say that as a male, I rarely experience such issues. And I think self-reflection and awareness is so key to be able to understand how male privilege works and the disproportionate access to opportunity that we have. So I'd say let's give them a big round of applause for being so vulnerable experience so that we can all learn from. So what are the challenges we're facing in addressing gender inequality in India? What would we consider the top three challenges? Akanksha, let's start with you. So essentially you want to know what are the challenges from a communication industry standpoint, right? From a gender inequality. I think one obviously as I clearly put out there while the MC had mentioned a few stats, but I think one of the big challenges is that there is something which is broken at the initial level. So very initially when somebody is getting promoted to say a middle management, there is a delay. There are challenges that they face and they feel there are a lot of headwinds out there that are kind of pulling people, women down, women who are great achievers but don't get to be at the level that they should be. So there is a need I believe for leaders sitting at the top to build a more inclusive and a more empowered workplace. That's how you can address it. The big challenge to answer the question is that one is obviously the fact that they are not given the same kind of opportunity. Second, I think is that they are not recognized enough. They kind of, I mean, they consider like one of the senior leaders I worked with said women are more sincere and he was very kind to women to put it that way. He really empowered them but not many people really value the you know what they bring on the table. Very important and pertinent point is that flexibility is missing. That's a big challenge for women, women across the board as I can see the panel as well. You know, flexibility in terms of getting in today's world with the pandemic and people working remotely. I think people have come to terms with a lot of flexibility, but now you're asking people to come back to office. You asked them to work erratic hours and whether we are married, not married, we have kids not don't have kids everybody has their own personal life. So flexibility is important and I think it's a big challenge for women, you know, for gender equality. Thank you Prasita. Thanks Akansha. I think I kind of slightly have a different view here. I personally feel that if I have to speak specifically about the PR and communications industry. I think this is one of the industries where from a gender diversity perspective we are doing much better than a lot of other industries that that I've had some sort of an association with. But for us the challenge has been more to get women in leadership roles. Right and some of the things that happen in that journey is sometimes the choices that women make themselves. Like for instance, a lot of times I've heard people tell me that oh you managed to be in a leadership role because you decided to not have a child. I do have a child. He has four legs. Very cute. Takes a lot of my time. But I think the point is that, you know, even if you are making that choice, I feel like it's so important to spare the judgment. Like my choice, let me live it. Right. And I feel like as women, the first responsibility is your own. If you don't take, you know, complete control of your career, your life, your choices. There's just way too many men and women sitting around who are ready to make those choices for you. So I feel like one is you make that choice. Two is you don't feel guilty about it. Three is you do whatever the hell you can to make it work for you. Right. When I say that, that means have the ability to be the strongest voice in the room, even if not the loudest. And that's fair. Don't worry if somebody says you're aggressive. That's your point of view. I find you aggressive too. I take it as a compliment. I mean find a way basically to get back on that. And I think just to begin with, figure your life and your choices out. That's step one. Then comes the other piece to it, which is a whole lot about the organization that you work for, the kind of policies that we have. Are they providing you enough growth opportunities? Is there some sort of a career path that is being worked out for women, especially women who are making some life choices, probably taking some sort of a break and then coming back to work? How much is the organization committed to making all of that fall in place? And the moment you realize that for an organization, diversity and inclusion is a work stream, or it's a PR campaign, or it's a hiring target. You know, that's not the place where you'll find any sort of diversity and inclusion. That's what I think. Thank you. Yeah, so since we have touched on my favorite topic. Yeah, so I will say yes, communications industry is very, very receptive of women, but the challenge where women are not able to reach the boardroom or the leadership position is they are not provided with the kind of infrastructure. Here's an example. I know so many of my friends working at PR agencies at a very good level, doing wonders and you know all their clients saying that you know you are doing an amazing job. The moment you know they plan a family or they have their in-laws to take care of or parents, ailing parents, sometimes parents are in a situation that they need a lot of care. Women somehow out of their own well all out of family compulsion have to quit their high-flying career just to nurture their kids or take care of their elderly parents. So that is where the gap starts that these women who are rising in their career they have to take a pause. When they take a pause they are stuck there and when after three, four years of doing or completing their responsibilities towards their parents in laws or their children when they want to come back to the mainstream they are not welcomed. I know about so many of my friends who are underpaid just because of the same reason that there was a break in their career and no one empathizes with them that why they have to take this brave decision. Second thing is flexibility. So if the women are being provided flexibility okay we are giving you this task design a campaign or come up with a strategy and you can do it anytime during the day from anywhere you feel like. I think they will be able to use their magic wand and get the work done, whatever time it is. The third part and I recently was part of PAFI where I discussed at length with Smriti Rani and I advocated for it the lack of infrastructure. If all the organizations like they're providing six months maternity leave and I'm privileged at NDTV there was a six months maternity leave and you can club it with one month of your own leave and enjoy and when you come back you will get a lighter shift. So if all organizations and when you come they will completely take care of your child. I'll tell you I was never aware of my kids vaccination on the warming time but the NDTV office doctor was aware. So if all women are being provided this kind of support and all the organizations private or government they establish a small crutch within the premises where the young mom can come take care of their kid and go back to work it. The industry is going to flourish because they are going to retain that woman workforce that talent which is rarely found. So if all these things are being taken care of I see we will be able to see more and more women in leadership roles in future. Thank you. Some great points by all the panelists. I'd like to acknowledge some of the points especially the one around taking charge of your career and making some choices but often those choices are not choices. They seem like choices to people but they're not choices. Additionally I'd like to say that you know with the past you know the situation whether it's in the UK the U.S. or India. The only difference is I found that in India women are really hard on themselves. And a lot of the women feel that you know if a woman has to step back if she's not getting the salary if she's not it is because she's made a choice to get married and have children and but that's not a choice. I mean that is a life choice that she has made in a personal life it should not be impacting her professional career. She doesn't lose her intelligence or ability to do work because she's had children or because you know she's married or she's taking care of anyone. So those are false choices. I think the most important challenge to recognize is that we all have biases and unless you address those biases you know things are not going to change. And when we talk about you know meritocracy we believe that you know fairness is equals meritocracy. That is a false premise. You know none of us are you know when we say that we are gender blind we are race blind first it's a wrong thing to do. But we are not the minute you say that you're blind you're actually you know going into the bias over drive. So whatever decisions you make about a woman colleague about a woman manager about a woman leader are going to be biased. And I'd say if I have to think of you know the other two challenges bias of course in the industry. The other two I'd say is that you know our industry is not very different to other industries like the retail or tech where the lower levels are like fully populated with women but as you move up women you know they're less and less women. And that is a challenge because women do not see role models they did not see the support. Some of what they're seeing spoke about and some of what procedure and a conscious spoke about you know flexibility. You know work life balance but also the recognition that men and women are not that different in today's world and in previous world I mean all decades previously. You know there's this thing that everyone quotes men are from Mars and women are from Venus. That's totally false that's just you know somebody wanted to sell a book and they put that quote there. Men are not very different from women when it comes to empathy for children when they it comes to you know the need for flexibility. What we need to look at is how can we ensure that men take the same amount of parental leave men get that same flexibility men are not looked down at if they say that I'm going home to look after my wife or my children or I have to pick up my children and it's only then that we will start looking at creating more equality and more fairness and more diversity. This is the example from Canada which is supposed to be you know one of the most inclusive countries in the world. And they've noticed that unless you do the same things for men unless they start you know taking some of the load of women that is never going to be equality or there's never going to be equal number of women at the top. And the last thing I'd say is that women need to you know get sponsors internal sponsors and organization for women and this is not about mentoring a sponsor is committed to take charge of the person and ensure that they open the networks and open career paths for this person and when women see a career path and they see somebody is on their side they will be able to go move move and progress faster than they do at this stage. Thank you. Thank you. I think those were some great discussion points unfortunately we're running out of time but I feel like we've just about scratch the surface of what we want to talk about but hopefully there will be lots more discussion during the day. So thank you all for your participation and thank you for listening.