TravTalk India Online Magazine
Ritu Chawla Mathur, Managing Partner, Prognosis Global Consulting, shares a few ideas on how the industry can help emancipate more women. She emphasizes on creating an ‘equality mindset’ at ground-up from education in colleges and enforcing POSH curriculum in catering colleges.
TT Bureau
How can travel and hospitality companies help uplift women in the sector?
Creating an ‘equality mindset’ must be done at ground-up from education in colleges. Awareness created by the education sector can pave the way for the employment sector, when it comes to tough conversations around equality at work, and women empowerment. Also, POSH curriculum must be enforced in all catering colleges.
The greatest challenge for women is how to balance their family life and their work. Research has shown that taking on more responsibility at work might have a negative impact on family life. The unbalanced state between life and work is by far one of the major obstacles to women’s career development, especially at the mid-managerial level. It’s high time that organizations provide various support measures for employees to achieve work-life balance, allow women to take flexible work hours and roles that allow them to work from home, instead of taking sabbaticals and career breaks. Also, consider enforcing day-care norms for young mothers/ parents in organizations with more than 20 employees. Flextime and other family-friendly policies are critical, but must be offered to all employees, not just women to reduce the inequal divide. In this way employees in general will better recognize the company’s values and increase their commitment to the organization.
Further, research has documented gender differences in promotions to managerial positions, from which it is clear that men are over-represented in preferred positions that pay better. Maybe it is high time that the fiscal audits include audit of equal pay norms to create level-playing fields.
Part of role of the hotel classifications committee, under the auspices of the Ministry of Tourism must recognize, award and rate to hotels based on the number of ‘Women Employed’. A minimum of 30 per cent of the workforce to be women, must be encouraged and rewarded. Homestays is a great sector where women have started making a mark. The government has been encouraging rural tourism as well through women self-help groups. However, more can be done, by the financial sector by providing cheaper business loans, and conducting financial planning workshops.
Why should we have more women in the workforce?
Some traits that women bring on to the table cannot be underplayed, well-organized, full of compassion, spiritually aligned and well-balanced. A high level of emotional intelligence. The best women leaders Iv seen are well-rounded people. These women are master multi-taskers and highly collaborative (though not afraid to get territorial to protect their domain). Studies reveal that financial performance of a company is better with a higher percentage of women at top levels; there is a growing relevance that gender-ratio has on the performance of companies. Organizations are competing in an increasingly global environment, which calls for greater adaptability and a superior combination of technical and survival skills.
