July 10, 2018

Changing Landscape

Rearden did not believe that the bill (Equalization of Opportunity) would pass. He was incapable of believing it. Having dealt with the clean reality of metals, technology, production all his life, he had acquired the conviction that one had to concern oneself with the rational, not the insane-that one had to seek that which was right, because the right answer always won-that the senseless, the wrong, the monstrously unjust could not work, could not succeed, could do nothing but defeat itself. A battle against a thing such as that bill seemed preposterous and faintly embarrassing to him, as if he were suddenly asked to compete with a man who calculated steel mixtures by the formula of numerology.

...and yet all these battles still exist - to be actually fought - the mind bogglingly obvious unfairness. Something that shouldn’t, by any logic, exist in first place. Even more infuriating is the indifference of people toward them.

Two human being working the same job and have similar performance on their job should get same salary- its that simple. Then how is that not true? For some reason, one of them have to go extra mile, perform even more and yet not get the same salary, same promotions because there is misconception in people in charge - I am not even sure what their bias is? Living in this century they can't really think that perfomance differs with gender, race, age, or sexual orientation. That should be the only criteria a person's salary or promotions should be judged, shouldn't it? Why is it appropriate to say, in that case, "You are too young (curse of looking young than being young)" or "You are too ambitious (Seriously, just because I wanted to work in strategy?)".

Why do we even have to ask for gender pay gap statistics? It shouldn't exist in first place. Any business should promote their best talents, reward them, support them and respect their work-life balance. Guess, one of the culprit being quoted is the work-life balance - at least when we think about gender pay gap - although if that's true then other pay gaps should not exist at all. There is no work-life balance differences when we are talking about race based or sexual orientation based biases. This makes me wonder if that's only an excuse?

But let's talk about work-life balance. One of the best talk on the topic I have attended was by Eve Sprunt. It was part of SPE distinguished lecture (don't get me started on the reaction from others who attended the talk - apparently it was not a "technical" talk so shouldn't have been part of distinguished lecture because evidently technical community is not part of society and shouldn't be bothered by such issues!). The talk was about rising proportion of Dual-career couples and how this is changing the dynamics of work force in oil sector (it was a SPE talk, afterall but the issue will be relevant to any sector). This is especially relevant when the older generation do not understand the reluctance of dual-career couple's reluctance to take an expatriate role (unlike older generation, employees no longer have their spouses follow them anywhere at their whim) or their reaction when they take paterinity leaves (yep, this is not just regarding "women's issue" anymore - its a changing family dynamics issue). They usually deal with this by employing the couple and then asking whose career will take precedence (in subtle ways, of course). Not sure if this is a way of promoting work-life balance - they are asking couples to chose who will sacrifice their career for the other. The resentment of such a decision can't be healthy for a relationship. 

Let me digress a bit to define the problem fully. A recet report from ILO regarding care work and care jobs puts 42% of women who are currently out of job are doing unpaid care work while 6% of men are doing the same (I am fairly sure the percentage of men have been increasing in recent years- again changing family dynamics). A rise in dual-career couples mean these percentages will decrease in future, especially for women. By ILO's estimate, we will need 189 millions of extra care workers by 2030. 

Understanding this changing dynamics in workforce, is one of the key requirement for businesses if they want to engage the best talents. The work-life balance concepts and stereotypes like work-life balance only pertains to women employee or they are the only one who wants to work part-time or work from home (for some reason when men work from home or work part-time its not seen as a work-life issue or family issue), need to be challenged and changed. Families are no longer only women's responsibility. The new generation do understand this (may be not all but quite a lot of them do: for all we get blamed for -social media addiction, selife generation, gadget savvy - we have got this concept better than rest) - the older one has to catch up to this fact because like it or not the older generation is still running the show in most places. Assuming archaic policies that worked in their time and trying to teach the next generation these archaic concepts will not work. So get used to paternity leaves, part-time workers and work from home concepts. They are going to become more common. Design the policies around them. And for God's sake, do not ask them to chose one career over the other. Even if this is unavoidable at the moment - it is none of your business. It's their family decision. If they can make it work with both of them having successful career, who are you to say that they can't, that they have to chose. Instead let us design policies that they don't have to chose. Encourage them both to take equal responsibillities of family - balance the responsibilities of family - and let them both have a good work-life balance. Why should one have a better career while the other better family life? - let them both have both. 

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