People are waiting to see you fall, immense pressure on women: Naina Lal Kidwai

“I think for all of the women who embarked on the careers in the early 80s felt like goldfish in a bowl. You always felt you were on display and there were people just waiting to see you fall, ” says Naina Lal Kidwai, former president of FICCI.

 

The veteran banker is of the view that women face a lot of pressure in their workplace. “I had done a book on 30 women CEOs, their voices, their stories. And pretty much every one of those women CEOs had felt that pressure of having to work twice as hard to be heard, to be understood, and to make their way. Don't forget that working hard doesn't just come from the office environment, but also from trying to balance all that happens at home, where the social pressures of being the ideal wife, mother, daughter-in-law, and daughter, all of that also weigh on women,” Kidwai said in an exclusive conversation with Udayan Mukherjee, global business editor, Business Today TV.

 

On the former ICICI Bank MD and CEO Chanda Kochhar episode, Kidwai said that there was additional scrutiny around it. “I'm glad that there were so many other competent women there at the time, Arundhati Bhattacharya, Shikha Sharma, and others that have emerged after that as well, which has maybe not made it a man/woman issue, after all, there are men who been in similar situations too. So, it is one of those incidents, which while very unfortunate, did take some of the sheens of women CEOs,” former country head of HSBC India added.