Sticky Floors and Glass Ceilings
A while ago I met a young woman from Satara district, Maharashtra in India. Let’s call her Lakshmi. A secondary school graduate, wife and mother of two children, she described her efforts to improve her family’s economic status. She had started by selling products door-to-door for a multi-level-marketing brand. She then discovered bee-keeping via a YouTube video and was soon selling her own brand of honey on Facebook. Her enterprise not only gave her children small ‘luxuries’ they could not previously afford, but gave Lakshmi pride in her accomplishments and in the contribution she was making to her family. I was impressed with her dynamism and told her so. She responded, “But, you know, my whole family wants me to fail.” She went on to describe how she had to ensure her children never fell ill or did poorly at school and that her in-laws’ every need was well taken care of. Any lapse on these fronts was attributed to her not devoting her full attention to the family. Her persistence and resilience despite the utter lack of family support was simultaneously inspiring and heartbreaking. A few days later, still overwhelmed by Lakshmi’s experience, I shared her story with two colleagues at Ashoka University. These women, both highly qualified and extremely successful, heard me out, then said, “But, you know, it’s the same for us.” Their words, like Lakshmi’s, felt like a body blow. They challenged every notion of ‘women’s empowerment’ we practice in the social sector. They dramatised for me just how seriously the sticky floor of grossly unequal gender role expectations hampers the aspirations of women of all socio-economic categories everywhere.
