Working Moms: Torn between joy, guilt and dearth of opportunities?

Torn between joy, freedom, and guilt at leaving my then three-year-old daughter behind, I went to Europe to complete a part of my study programme in International Business in May 2015.

My friends know what a conflicting time it was for me, given I had to miss moments such as my daughter's first day at school. I was judged aplenty by anybody and everybody.

I was discouraged by many from going to Europe, just like I was discouraged from pursuing a steady career, afterwards. 

I persisted. 

Thankfully, my parents, my sister and my little daughter stood by me.

I continued to work from home for two years, after birthing my son in 2017, until I was pushed to quit work for assorted reasons. 

Trust me, I fought till the last. 

I freelanced and consulted. I slogged it out for peanuts, only to run into an enormous blank wall, from time to time.

I know that I am not alone in this journey. 

I would like to share a friend's true story here. This was a girl who always wanted to be a doctor. She worked with a quiet determination for a career in the field of medicine.

She became the first woman to have had a college education from her immediate (and notably orthodox) family. She graduated with top honours and went on to practice in India and the UAE - for the latter, she had to crack a formidable exam to obtain the mandatory MOH license for doctors in UAE.

And then, there came the phase where she had to encounter the inevitable work-family conflict.

Clinical practice demands extensive, expensive education and years of on-the-job training, leaving little time for much else.

While male physicians with children could afford to focus exclusively on work, a lot of female physicians are still left to tackle domestic as well as work responsibilities. (See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4131769/ )

In my friend's case, her mother supported her a great deal, but she had to shuttle on and off between India and the UAE. My friend was pained to see her mother exert herself. Also, she missed being with her family a great deal. At one point, she simply chose to give up her career to focus on her family and her young children.

Would she be able to take off from where she left, should she want to resume her career at a later point in time? The answer remains ambiguous, right now.

Thousands of employable women in India, and in many places abroad, undergo this phase, across professions, where a vast majority of the corporate system seems reluctant to meaningfully accommodate such unrefutable career breaks rooted in gender-specific roles and responsibilities. 

One popular practice among the corporates is to not consider freelance experience as work experience at all, no matter how rich or valid it is. This inevitably impacts pay - think what last-drawn salary and other things could do to set the bar for you at your new workplace!

I'm still holding onto the thought that we'll all find a way. That we shall overcome. That empathy will eventually lead to that holy grail of a paradigm shift.

Until then, I do what I do best. I persist.