STRESS, SUCCESS AND EVERYTHING IN-BETWEEN
The Highs and Lows of A Woman’s Journey in the Corporate World
CARE: This is Chapter 40 of my book Stress, Success and Everything In-Between. These are individual anecdotes but to understand the professional journey in totality, I would recommend reading the book right from Chapter 01 onwards.
When I was tormented by a rogue borrower at the MN
Branch, and the higher-ups did not know how to handle it, they did the only
thing they knew they could do. They promptly transferred me to another branch
where I was required to manage the Personal Banking Division. It was a
medium-sized branch, and I was in the third position as per the hierarchy of
the branch.
What made this place a happy experience for me,
despite hard work, was its leadership. The Branch Manager was
different from his contemporaries in extending gender equality to women
colleagues. He was comfortable with women managers and virtually handed over
the reins of the branch to the three of us - two Divisional Managers and an
Accountant, all women, under his benevolent leadership.
Now, fast forward to the day of the dreaded
inspection and audit. In walks one Mr VB Saxena (name changed to protect his
identity), for inspecting the branch.
We arranged for the inspecting official a table in
the room of the Branch Manager, thinking he would be kept engaged by our boss
and his every action would remain under his close observation, helping us to
sail through the inspection exercise.
Mr Saxena was a textbook inspector, far away from
the practical realities of everyday banking. He was ready to scrutinise every
ledger, register and voucher in any nook or cranny of the branch.
Every time Mr Saxena so much as breathed a word of criticism, our Branch Manager would call us to explain, and it was like a call to arms for us. One of us would march in to defend, and before you know it, all three of us were standing in front of him, ready to take on his contention. It got to the point where poor Mr Saxena could not handle the estrogen overload. He would look self-conscious, his face would turn red, and he would try to shoo us away quickly.
He would say, "Please, please, please! You
ladies, please do not come to me together. I feel trapped and cannot handle
it.”
We knew we could convince him more easily by
arguing collectively and making him concede his point. Eventually, he could not
take it anymore. He approached our boss, asking him to rein in his "female
brigade" as the trio gave him jitters. Can you believe it? The senior officer
could not stand up to us as we were women! Talk about a reverse harassment
situation! Hadn't the tables turned to our advantage this time?
They say there is strength in numbers. We experienced it in 1978 while fighting for the women officers' right to join the Lunch Club and again in 1982 while taking on the Inspecting Official to counter the irrational shortcomings in branch functioning pointed out by him.
(To be continued...)
*****
5 comments:
Bravo! That is what is called collective women empowerment. Ek aur ek gyarah aur 3 to bane 33. Like the expression" Tables get turned".
You have been a trail blazer and trend setter wherever you went and in whatever capacity you worked. My salutations to Ranjana Bharij! (Vijay Gupta)
The empowerment of the female brigade!
Of course handling a contingent of 3 “no nonsense” ladies is a scary proposition!!
Well written Ranjana. Your memory is excellent. (Varsha Uke Nagpal)
An Excellent write up and a writer. Do you write in Hindi also ? (Indira Narasimhan)
Wonderful experience! (Kanwal Bir Singh Bedi)
Great recollection Ranjanaji...one self-assured clear-thinking, articulate female is often too much for the average ( Indian?๐ฑ) male to handle, I can visualise his plight with 3 of you fixing him with a collective gimlet eye๐ (Lakshmy Iyer)
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